THE Philippine women's national football team enters its first tournament since the 2023 Fifa Women’s World Cup with a lot of goals including a podium finish in the 19th Asian Games in China.
The Filipinas play their first official match since their historic World Cup campaign when they face Hong Kong on Friday in the Asiad at the Wenzhou Sports Centre, about 300 kilometers away from the main hub of Hangzhou.
See Filipinas have 13 World Cup veterans in Asian Games roster
It is also the team's first tournament under head coach Mark Torcaso, who took over the helm after Alen Stajcic accepted a coaching offer with Perth Glory in the Australia league after the World Cup.
The goal for the Asian Games is two-fold — to get as far in the tournament as possible and claim a medal, and take advantage of the quadrennial meet as preparation for other tournaments that include the Olympic qualifying tournament.
The second round of Olympic qualifying will be in October in Perth where they will play three matches including against Australia that could feature Sam Kerr.
“I'm gonna say that my aim is to win it,” said Torcaso during media availability. “Obviously it's everyone’s goal to win something special like this. So our aim is to get as far as possible in the tournament and hopefully play in the final game.”
“But also from our perspective, we understand (the tournament is) a chance for us to prepare ourselves for some upcoming competitions, and as well as a chance for me to see some of the players playing in highly competitive games here in the Asian Games and allows us a chance to see where everyone's at and how players can play probably differently for us in different scenarios.”
“It's more about a way for us to really see how these players can play in a competitive competition, but definitely want to go as deep and as far in the competition as we can to hopefully, finish on a podium or win,” Torcaso said.
Expectations would be definitely high for the Filipinas after the World Cup where they defeated New Zealand and played against top teams in the world in Norway and Switzerland. The Asiad team, however, will have 15 remnants including Sarina Bolden and Sara Eggesvik from the World Cup team – 13 of which were part of the official line-up and two listed as reserves.
Others such as Angela Beard, a key piece at the back for the Filipinas in their World Cup stint, were unavailable due to commitments with their club as the Asian Games is not part of the Fifa window.
“Unfortunately, it was going to be very difficult to get the full commitment of all the playing group due the fact that this tournament is outside the [Fifa] window. So while it would have been amazing to have the whole group available, unfortunately, some players couldn’t come because of the short turnarounds with whatever commitments they had outside the window,” Torcaso said.
Torcaso recognized the expectations, which he hopes to meet in the Asian Games.
“Obviously, the expectations have been set from the successes been happening in the last three years. So my expectations are we'd be as competitive as possible, but also acknowledge that it's a new team and it's a new team for me and for our staff. So it's just a matter of us finding out the players. So we're going to spend a lot of time and getting to know them in this tournament, but the expectation is to be as competitive as possible,” said Torcaso.
The Filipinas face a Hong Kong side that they already defeated, 4-0, during the first round of the Olympic qualifier, but Torcaso and the girls are not taking the match lightly.
“I'm anticipating a great game but as I said before, every opponent regardless of results that have had in the past, you have to treat them with respect. Because you just don't know what they're doing and how they're preparing also. So my main focus is to focus just on our group and focus on immersing ourselves in what they're capable of and getting them understanding of what they can do. From Hong Kong's perspective, we've done a lot of review on that in that game in particular, but also some other games that they've played in. And we feel that we're ready to give them to give them what we need and prepare ourselves the right way,” said Torcaso.
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