Lessons learned from history-making Filipinas

MANILA, Philippines – Just 10 months ago, the Philippine women’s national football team needed a goal in the 89th minute from Tahnai Annis and another one at the 91st minute from Camille Wilson to beat Nepal, 2-1, in the Asian Football Confederation Women’s Asian Cup qualifier held in Tashkent, Uzbekhistan.

In their next game, Chandler McDaniel scored in the 86th minute to help the team beat Hong Kong, 2-1. 

A loss in either match would have been disastrous. The consequence would have made the Philippines miss the Asian Cup early this year, the same tournament where our team qualified for the 2023 FIFA World Cup.

Nepal is currently 101st in the FIFA world ranking. Hong Kong is 78th.

To juxtapose the team that played in Uzbekhistan to the Filipinas who won the AFF Women’s Championship on Sunday, July 17, at the Rizal Memorial Stadium is to marvel at how much the women’s national team program has improved since October 2021.

From merely scraping past the Asian Cup qualifier, the Filipinas earned a World Cup slot. 

This was followed by a come-from-behind thriller of a triumph over Myanmar for the bronze medal in the Southeast Asian Games in Vietnam last May.

Two months later, the improvement became more evident in their conquests of Australia, defending champion and world No. 32 Vietnam, and world No. 43 Thailand en route to lifting the trophy in the AFF Women’s Championship.

All of these were historic.

The SEA Games bronze was the first time that the women’s team actually won a medal in the biennial games.

Meanwhile, the World Cup and AFF championship were the first for any Philippine football team.

The growth of the Filipinas has been nothing short of phenomenal, bordering on being miraculous. No national team in any sport has in recent memory accomplished so much in such a short amount of time. 

But what should be worth noting is that the achievements of the Filipinas did not come by accident. All these were carefully planned out and intentional, born with a single-minded goal to form a team that could progressively compete with the best squads in the region and even beyond.

The blueprint to success was no rocket science, but it required a combination of inventiveness and finding the best people to turn the team into a world beater.

And this is where the women’s football program can serve as a model for other national teams.

When the pandemic prevented face-to-face trainings in the country, the Filipinas pitched camps in the United States to prepare for the Asian Cup qualifiers and the Asian Cup.

Even before the entry of new faces to the squad this year, there was always the sense that the squad had the talent that could match that of its regional rivals. What was needed was a master tactician who could instill a system that the players would buy into, optimize their individual strengths, and turn them into a cohesive fighting crew.

And so a world-caliber coach was hired, someone who had actual experience of winning at the highest levels. Allen Stajcic was given a free rein to form his staff and the team he deemed fit for what was required to be competitive internationally.

Finding the winning formula during the World Cup qualifiers was just the beginning. The key was to sustain the gains of the program by sticking to the formula that was already tried and tested.

The team re-assembled in March for another training camp in Australia in preparation for the SEA Games. After their bronze-winning performance in Vietnam, the people behind the squad made sure to sustain the gains by bringing the Filipinas to Turkey and Slovenia to expose them to European opponents in friendly matches. The Filipinas dropped a close match, 0-1, to world No. 27 Ireland. They bounced back by trouncing world No. 63 Bosnia and Herzegovina twice. In January, the Philippines was ranked just 64th in the world. 

These were significant, confidence-building performances against big, physical European squads. It marked the team’s readiness to defend home soil in the AFF Women’s Championship. 

There is a lesson to be learned from the Philippine women’s football team program and it is fairly simple. Trust the process. Why fix something that is not broken? Tinker with it a bit to further strengthen the program, but do not tamper with it and do not overhaul it out for no reason.

But in the process of learning, wins must be had. That still is the best way to measure how far the program has gone and to gauge how further the program can still go. 

The Filipinas crowning themselves the queens of Southeast Asian football is but proof that the Philippine women’s football team can only get even better. They will get better. – Rappler.com