In a country obsessed with beauty pageants, basketball and boxing, the Philippines women’s team hope to ignite interest in soccer when they make the nation’s World Cup debut.
Long minnows in the sport, the Philippines have never played at a FIFA World Cup, either men’s or women’s.
All that is to change on Friday next week when the women’s side under Australian coach Alen Stajcic play Switzerland in Dunedin, New Zealand.
Photo: AFP
Stajcic calls their journey from “almost ground zero” to the World Cup “miraculous.”
Half of his players do not belong to a professional club and some have been “running around the block on their own” for training, he said.
“It’s been a meteoric sort of rise for the team,” the 49-year-old said. “The challenge for us is to somehow maintain and sustain that improvement, not be happy with where we got to.”
Since Stajcic’s appointment as coach in late 2021, the Philippines have jumped from 68 in the FIFA rankings to a best-ever 46th place.
It began with the Women’s Asian Cup early last year, when they made the semi-finals, losing to South Korea, but securing a historic World Cup berth. They followed it up with bronze at the Southeast Asian Games last year, then won the regional AFF Women’s Championship on home soil.
The Philippines are in Group A at the World Cup alongside cohosts New Zealand, Norway and Switzerland.
Although they are not be expected to get out of the group, defender Hali Long said they would still give it their all.
“I would like to think we’re going to go in there and do more than just participate,” she said. “We’re going in there to compete with everything we have to show.”
The team hope getting the Philippines to their first World Cup can be a game changer for soccer in the country.
Long was born in the US — most of the players on the national team have been recruited from the Philippines’ large diaspora.
“It’s not the most popular sport here,” Long said at a practice session with the Manila club she and national goalkeeper Inna Palacios play for.
“It’s not the beauty pageants, boxing and basketball; we don’t have a ‘B,’” she said.
Palacios, one of the few players born in the Philippines, said that more investment was needed to find and develop young talent in the poverty-plagued country.
“We don’t have the fields or a place to play,” Palacios said.
“It was tagged as a ... sport for people who are rich and can afford fields and shoes, but in reality you just need your feet and a ball,” she said.
Stajcic is a major reason for the Philippines’ improvement.
He brings a wealth of experience in a playing and coaching career in Australia.
Stajcic said that being able to get the squad together for extended periods, including a 10-week training camp in the US before the Asian Cup, has been another reason for their dramatic upturn.
“Women’s football in the last five years has gone through exponential growth,” Stajcic said. “The rest of the world is already a hundred steps ahead of us.”
Despite that he is backing his team to make an impact if they “do everything right.”
“We’re going to need a little bit of luck,” Stajcic said. “We’re going to have to make our luck, we’re going to have to give ourselves every possible chance in our preparation.”
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