The Shift in the Women’s Football Balance of Power

August 22, 2023

I have been a staunch observer of women’s collegiate soccer in the United States for more than a decade now. Within the municipal triangle of Houston/Austin/San Antonio, Texas where I have coached middle school ball for almost 25 years is home to at least 30 universities with competitive women’s soccer programs representing four college divisions. For years, my weekly routine in the fall has been to attend as many college women’s soccer matches as I could, driving from one city to another, often times watching multiple matches a day, especially during post-season tournaments.

All this is in addition to men’s and women’s internationals I attend, as well as men’s collegiate soccer, and full professional league matches in both genders. From March to December every year in the United States, I literally breathe, eat, dream football, and continue when I am home in the Philippines. Over the years, I have seen some of the world’s best players, such as Christen Press, Rachel Daly, Abby Wombach, Nichelle Prince, Carli Lloyd, a host of other professionals in the National Women’s Soccer League, most of whom played college ball in the United States, and Cam Rodriguez on this side of the Pacific.

Since the early 1980’s when the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) officially established a women’s soccer competition, the sport has been growing in the United States by leaps and bounds. By the 1990’s, the United States was poised to dominate the women’s soccer world with rosters entirely comprised of players who graduated from American collegiate programs. The Women’s United Soccer Association, the world’s first full professional women’s league was founded in the US in 2001, and was succeeded by Women’s Professional Soccer in 2009. Since 2013, the American college system has been churning out players for the National Women’s Soccer League.

Garnering lessons from the previous two leagues’ experiences, the NWSL quickly established itself as the top women’s professional league in the world, where the best players flocked and thrived. As the league matured, the US Women’s National Team asserted its global dominance even more, winning back-to-back World Cup championships. The United States is the only country to have played in all eight World Cup semi-finals previous to 2023, and six out of seven Olympic semi-finals. With four World Cup championships, one runners-up and three third-place finishes, four Olympic golds, a silver and a bronze, the USA is the winningest national soccer team in history; no other country even comes close.

Before August 6, 2023 when Sweden eliminated USA in the round of 16, the Yanks had not lost a World Cup match since Japan prevailed in penalties in the final on July 11, 2011. Between those two World Cup defeats, the USA posted a record of 14 wins, three draws and no losses, outscoring opponents 44-7 and raising the trophy twice. They accomplished this fielding rosters overwhelmingly comprised of NWSL players; the sole exception is Lindsey Horan with French powerhouse Lyon. With very few exceptions such as Horan and Alyssa Thompson who both turned pro straight from high school, every single player to have donned the US national team kit to date excelled in an American university. The U.S. intercollegiate athletic system, the same system 16 of the 23 Filipinas on our World Cup roster have gone through, has been the main production line of players for the world’s most dominant women’s national team.

But in 2023, it has become evident that a shift is taking place in the women’s football power structure, perhaps manifested in the all-Europe final. In the annals of football history, the 2020-2021 seasons will forever be chronicled as chaotic due to a global pandemic. There were league suspensions all over the globe, tournament cancellations, postponements even of qualifiers for the World Cup, football’s holiest grail. In the United States, the biggest sports market of all, pro leagues – not just soccer – struggled to figure out how to proceed with games, implementing every precautionary tactic in the book, from playing in empty arenas to creating safety bubbles. I can’t tell you how traumatic it was for me, a self-diagnosed football addict, to go for months without my therapy sessions at the local stadia or on TV. I had to resort to watching past World Cup match broadcasts I had archived on VHS and DVD to get me through my withdrawal pangs.

During this period, as the United States struggled to get a handle on the pandemic, NWSL players were forced to find a way to keep playing, to stay in form, to maintain their competitive edge. The result was a mass exodus of top players across the pond where European countries were managing the pandemic more effectively. Numerous US Women’s National Team stars left North America, most famously Samantha Mewis and Rose Lavelle, who both transferred to Manchester City in the English Women’s Super League. They opened the floodgates. The aforementioned Houston Dash superstar Rachel Daly returned to her native England and signed a deal with Aston Villa. Players moved or returned to Europe, many choosing to take pay cuts just so they could keep playing.

Data shows in the first post-pandemic Women’s World Cup that the European club system has gained significantly on the United States. In the 2015 round of 16, outside of team USA, there were 25 players based in the U.S., six of them still in college. Only Germany was anywhere near that figure with 18 in the Frauen-Bundesliga. In the same round in 2019, that number jumped to 37 foreign players playing in the US system. France came in second with 27 non-native players in the French Division 1 Féminine.

On the other hand – er – foot, in the 2023 round of 16, the number of non-US players based in the USA dropped back to 23 and was outnumbered by foreign players in England (55), Spain (29), and France (28). Of the eight sides in the quarter-final round, a total of only five US-based players remained, carried on the rosters of three countries – Japan (2), Australia (2), and Sweden (1). Of 83 players in the quarter-finals bracket competing in leagues outside their own country, 72 were based in Europe.

We cannot blame the shifting tide on the pandemic alone. Europe after all is the undisputed mecca of football (though Rio de Janeiro might dispute that claim), the most organized, the most competitive, with the most prolific youth development systems in the world, and the most successful both on the pitch and in the bank. Big-time glamor clubs like Man City and Bayern Munich have deep coffers to draw from in the development of their women’s sides. Whereas in the men’s game, Europe lead the way and northern North America caught on rather late, it’s been quite the opposite in the women’s game. The USA has been the leading force in women’s soccer development, and now Europe has seen the light and is finally coming around.

As if the pandemic weren’t crisis enough, the NWSL and the United States Soccer Federation have been reeling from the results of a year-long independent investigation into reports of sexual harassment and abuse committed by coaches against players in clubs across the league. Released in October of 2022, the report describes a culture of systemic misconduct by coaches and negligence by team management that had been going on for years. Lead by former Acting U.S. Attorney General Sally Yates, the investigation implicated some of the most successful coaches in the league in the most heinous acts of sexual coercion and harassment of players under their charge. As the investigation was conducted, numerous clubs removed head coaches and the league commissioner resigned mid-season. It shouldn’t be a surprise then that the NWSL’s status as the best women’s professional soccer league has been tainted.

Significantly, perhaps foreshadowing times to come, the lone surviving representative in the quarter-finals from the Americas hemisphere, Colombia, fielded a World Cup lineup playing club ball almost entirely in Colombia, Brazil, or Spain, with the single exception of goalkeeper Catalina Perez, between the sticks at Werder Bremen. Only five Colombian National Team players went through the American collegiate system and just two had had any previous experience on US clubs. In contrast, among the Jamaican squad whom the Cafeteras eliminated, 17 had played or were currently playing for American universities, and eight had stints in the NWSL.

After extraordinary performances, including the 2-1 upset of second-seeded Germany launching Colombia into their first quarter-final ever, the Colombian national development system will only continue to evolve and improve, as it should. Likewise, I look forward to the Filipinas’ historic achievements also inspiring the Philippine Football Federation to build upon their success, to continue taking bold steps in improving our own youth development system and implement an inclusive national football curriculum, to use the beautiful game in addressing deep issues plaguing Philippine society around marginalization, exclusivity, disenfranchisement of the poor, glaring socio-economic and gender inequities, and a host of other injustices – all of which football has the power to help alleviate. I look forward to the development and expansion of the Philippine talent pool through an inclusive national system sustainable for generations to come, through which domestically produced players are good enough for clubs around the world to take notice, and can compete equally with their expatriate counterparts for national roster spots. That would signify a truly glorious era in Philippine football development.

Despite the crises the U.S. women have faced, the naturalized American side of me has faith that they will bounce back from the traumatic injustices they have had to fight. Indeed, rising global standards are good for the game, especially for us fans, and provide the challenge that the U.S. soccer establishment needs, an impetus for improvement, a catalyst for self-evaluation and recalibration, to ascend back onto the summit as a model football program they have been known to be. One thing that our Filipinas showed us is that in American collegiate athletics, players are trained never to give up despite the odds. I’ve witnessed this over and over and over on many a college pitch in the U.S. Adversity strengthens resolve, and the U.S. women collectively have had plenty of adversity lately – more than anyone should ever have to endure.

Kokoy Severino is a career educator, nationally certified youth soccer coach in the United States, and an executive officer of the Football for Peace Movement in the Philippines…

The Philippines’ World Cup Campaign is Not Over

August 8, 2023

Contrary to how it might feel and much of the rhetoric out there, the Philippine Women’s World Cup campaign is not over; in fact, it is never over.

Before we know it, the next cycle of World Cup qualifying will be upon us. Just as sure as the phases of the moon, as sure as the sunrise and the rainfall, as sure as the harvest, the World Cup cycle is an indelible part of life. We know where we have been for every World Cup final since the 1990’s, and dreaming of where we will be for World Cup tournaments to come – now including Women’s.

The Filipinas’ road to New Zealand in 2023 went through the Asian Football Confederation’s Asian Cup hosted by India in January 2022, which doubled as the World Cup Qualification tournament. The Philippines’ Asian Cup qualification process officially began in Tashkent, Uzbekistan on September 21, 2021 with a 2-1 defeat of Nepal. Three days later, the Philippines completed their group sweep by beating Hong Kong with the same scoreline, topping Group F under Head Coach Marlon Maro, thus qualifying for the Asian Cup finals tournament. Four months later, the road continued in India, where Coach Stajcic took the helm, and the Filipinas advanced to the knockout phase after blanking their fellow Southeast Asians Thailand 1-0 and Indonesia 6-0. Their historic semi-final berth in the 2022 Asian Cup delivered the entire Filipina and Filipina-American diaspora to the World Cup promised land.

The Asian Football Confederation will implement the same qualification process for the 2027 Women’s World Cup, going through the preceding Asian Cup tournament (host TBD as of this writing). If the timetable remains roughly the same, the qualifiers start again in 2025.

Exactly two months to the day from the Filipinas’ euphoric victory over New Zealand, the Asian Games women’s football tournament begins in Hangzhou, China, where the Philippines is grouped with Myanmar, Hong Kong, and a South Korea squad that just eliminated superpower Germany at the World Cup group stage for the first time in their history. Less than three weeks after the close of the Asian Games, the Filipinas face Taiwan in a qualifier for next year’s Olympics, the world’s second most important football tournament. The Filipinas bulldozed their way into the second round of the Olympic qualifiers last April by blanking every single one of our opening-round groupmates, including an 8-0 drubbing of hosts Tajikistan, on the way to a total +16 goal differential over three matches. The second round beginning on October 26 presents a much tougher challenge, though not insurmountable, with top-ranked Australia and Iran in our group, in addition to Taiwan, who we have never beaten and currently suffer an atrocious -23 head-to-head goal deficit. Should the Filipinas reach round three, they would be on the verge of making history again, this time on the Olympic stage.

The Philippine Football Federation has less than 60 days to find Coach Stajcic’s replacement, hold training camps, schedule friendly matches, and select a final roster for major international tournaments with much at stake. After the Olympic qualifiers come the next Southeast Asian Games, and then the ASEAN Football Federation championship where we hit the pitch as first-time defending champions, both probably taking place before Asian Cup qualifying begins.

These international competitive tournaments between World Cup cycles, and the training camps and friendlies leading up to them, are essential for national programs to continue developing and improving towards continued success at the world’s biggest dance every four years. They are critical components of World Cup preparation, which is an immediate and full-time endeavor. Through such intensive training and high-stakes international competitions, national programs remain organized and motivated, and players gain invaluable experience and maturity, presenting opportunities for players to compete against high-quality opponents joined by the best teammates a country can find.

And find them we must. I am by no means opposed to scouring the globe for Maharlikan blood in the talent of players from every corner of the world. But our reliance on foreign youth development systems to supply our national team players is not a recipe for long-term success. One thing this euphoric World Cup experience has exposed is the deficiency of our domestic youth development system, perhaps a symptom of much larger challenges in Philippine society around marginalization, exclusivity, disenfranchisement of the poor, glaring socio-economic and gender inequities, and a host of other injustices – all of which football has the power to help alleviate.

We are constantly being defeated by nations whose players were developed not in American universities, but on their own home soil. Indeed, the elite teams of Asia all produce players in their own respective domestic development systems. Japan consistently qualifies for the World Cup in both genders, winning the women’s championship in 2011, and they do so entirely with players developed in youth academies in Japan. Many of their academy graduates go on to full professional careers domestically, and not a few are exported to the big leagues. Every single player on the Japanese roster who stormed into the round of 16 and clobbered Norway was born in Japan and developed in the domestic system. Nine of the 23 now play top-tier pro club ball in Europe or the United States and the rest in the newly-established Japanese WE League. Two of their defenders, Minami and captain Kumagai, play at Roma, teammates of Norwegian striker Roman-Haug, now a household name to the entire Filipina diaspora. This Japanese squad was good enough for many to dare predict a finals berth on August 20.

Women’s football at the Asian Games has been dominated by China, North Korea, and Japan, who have been taking turns winning gold since 1990 when the sport was first included in the quadrennial competition. South Korea comes in a distant fourth in the medal count with three bronze. One thing we can’t help but note all four teams have in common is that they consistently produce national team rosters almost entirely in their own domestic youth development programs.

If the Philippines is to ensure consistent qualification and performance at the top level, it is vital to expand our player pool through a youth development system with a national instructional philosophy that is inclusive and actively targeting the masses. Our search for quality players to develop at every age must reach the barangay level, with trained coaches implementing a national youth development curriculum, empowering kids in a system that allows for progression all the way to top professional tiers. In no way am I suggesting we exclude great players for simply growing up abroad or for having one non-Filipino parent - that is so un-international football. This vision is a developmental model to address some of the ills that plague Philippine society, strengthen our football infrastructure, expand our talent, improve competitiveness, and continue to bring glory and hope to the Maharlika masses in future World Cup cycles. It is building upon what has already been accomplished, not supplanting it.

I like to think that gone are the days when our women were the constant table bottom-dwellers in every competition we entered. From 1981 to 2003, the Philippines participated in eight Women’s Asian Cup tournaments, accumulating a depressing -155 goal differential in 28 matches, winning only three and drawing one. In all but three of those tournaments, the Philippines finished at the bottom of the group. We finished second from the bottom in ‘83, ‘99, and ‘03.

In our own subcontinent, between 2004 and 2018, our total goal differential at the ASEAN Football Federation championship was an atrocious -51 through nine tournaments. During this period, Thailand, Vietnam, and Myanmar bagged the trophy nine times between them – fielding respective rosters overwhelmingly comprised of domestically developed players. The year before the pandemic, under Coach Let Dimzon, the Filipinas pulled our country up and out of the bottom rungs of the table and into the semi-finals, finishing a best-to-date fourth. We emerged from the pandemic with a new coach in 2022 and blasted our way to the final, capturing the trophy with a +21 goal differential in just five matches. Rest assured, our neighbors are reevaluating and recalibrating their own systems now, intent upon snatching our historic trophy out of our hands – er – feet. The Philippines must come prepared to defend our title by improving our game to tighten our hold on the championship.

It is a sobering thought that in the 42 years since we started competing in the women’s Asian Cup, the Philippines has yet to establish an effective national youth development system, while other countries in the region have. I cannot bear the thought of a relapse back to the dark ages of Philippine women’s football. It would be a sad and sorry epilogue indeed to the hard-earned and well-deserved achievements of the Filipinas.

The best possible outcome from the successes of this Filipinas squad is to inspire a comprehensive overhaul of the Philippine national football curriculum, creating opportunities for mass advancement in the game, inclusive, equitable, sustainable for generations to come, developing talent from all sectors of Maharlikan society, and establishing a repeated presence at the World Cup that continues to improve. This is a vision worthy to espouse as a footballing nation.

Kokoy Severino is a certified career youth soccer coach and an executive officer of the Football for Peace Movement…

 

Norway Scouting Report

Originally published July 28, 2023 by the Baguio Chronicle

Norway Scouting Report

By Kokoy Severino

By now, we all know just about everything we need to know about our beloved Filipinas. Just last week, we knew almost nothing about them. After taking us all to a level of euphoria only a footballing nation can know, we can’t get enough about them. We know that an overwhelming majority of them were born outside of the Philippines, we know where they went to college, we know which of their parents are Filipino, we know which country they live in, etc. We’ve even contemplated upon the legitimacy of their representation of the Philippines. If you haven’t, then you should as part of your football literacy development. And we know that this Sunday, our Filipinas will be playing the most important football match in the history of our country.

As a career soccer coach, I have always felt that it is my responsibility not only to know my players well, but to know as much as I can about my opponent. I couldn’t help but follow my instincts. In order for us to anticipate more effectively the kind of game we’re going to have, here are some of the more critical pieces of information about our next opponents.

Norway are nothing short of a European powerhouse in women’s football. They are one of only seven countries to have qualified for every single World Cup tournament since the inception of the women’s tournament in 1991. In all but the 2011 edition, Norway has progressed into the knockout rounds, and in no less than half of these outings, they have contested the semi-finals, going all the way to the final match twice, winning it all in 1995. Six out of eight tournaments saw the Norsewomen in the quarter-finals. On the continental front, Norway have qualified for every single Euro championship tournament except for the first one in 1984. When Norway qualified for Euro in 1987 for the first time, they won the championship, and went on to play in the next three final matches thereafter, finishing second twice in a row and then recovering the crown in 1993. Out of the 13 European championships staged, Norway has been in the semi-finals nine times, equaled only by Sweden, and topped only by Germany’s 10. Norway’s women have won Olympic Gold and Bronze Medals. The Norwegians have become accustomed to going  deep into a tournament; it is their country’s standard expectation of their women’s national soccer team.

This generation of Norwegian women is captained by Maren Mjelde, the anchor of their defensive line. Capped 167 times at 33 years old, Mjelde is on her third, and possibly last, World Cup go-round. She will be going into the final group match with particularly heightened intensity, knowing she may be on her last leg. Mjelde has been a blistering presence for Chelsea FC, who have won the Women’s Super League, England’s top flight, five times and captured four FA Cups since 2016 when the Blues signed her from Avaldsnes IL in Norway’s Toppserien.

The Women’s Super league is represented well in the Norwegian roster, with seven out 23 playing in England. The Norwegian left flank is staffed by Guro Reiten, Mjelde’s Chelsea teammate since 2019. At age 28, Reiten has scored 17 times for country in 82 appearances. The center-mid is sometimes quarterbacked by Arsenal’s Frida Maanum, who debuted for Norway’s senior squad at the age of 17 during the 2017 European Championship. Only 24 years old, Maanum already has 68 national team appearances. In their draw against Switzerland, Maanum slid over to the right and Vilde Risa took over the center. Risa has made 29 appearances in Manchester United’s midfield since 2021, and has been capped by Norway 62 times. With this all-WSL alignment, Norway fields a highly experienced, yet still young and very energetic midfield.

Gunning for a win on Sunday, Norway will undoubtedly field a three-forward formation. Their most dangerous scoring threats aren’t based in England at all; one is in France and one in Spain. Since 2014, Ada Hegerberg has been tearing up nets for Olympique Lyon, the winningest club in the world who have amassed 16 French league championships, 10 French cups, and a record eight UEFA Champions League titles. In Champions League play alone, OL has tallied 466 goals accumulating a mind-blowing +402 goal differential (that’s right, no typographical error there). Fifty-five of those goals were scored by Hegerberg, the current UEFA Champions League leading scorer. It’s unfortunate for Norway, but a blessing for the Philippines perhaps, that Hegerberg suffered a groin injury during warmups right before the game against Switzerland. The most prolific and most decorated goal-scorer in Europe today may or may not be ready by Sunday; her status remains up in the air. Certainly, the entire Filipino diaspora should be closely monitoring developments around Hegerberg’s injury, a critical factor that will most definitely impact the match outcome.

Before Caroline Graham Hansen was signed by Barcelona in 2019, she was winning championships with VfL Wolfsburg in Germany’s Frauen-Bundesliga. She continued her championship streak with Barcelona, winning four straight Primera Division titles along with two UEFA Champions League trophies and a host of copas. Hansen has featured in the Norwegian offense since 2011 at just 17 years old. Now 28, the Switzerland tie was Hansen’s 100^th cap. Together, Hegerberg and Hansen have tallied 87 international goals for Norway.

Quite the polar opposite of us, Norway has a long, storied history with women’s football, a program that has achieved success at the very highest level. Now, their backs are up against the wall, barely alive, clinging by one point. Their locker room is in disarray, frustrated, at least one superstar player at odds with their coach Hege Riise. This is our chance to go in for the kill, to exploit a rare moment of weakness, to find the Achilles heel and slice this giant down with a stroke from our mighty balisong. Given Norway’s experience though, it would be better to assume these vikings are coming in to the final group stage match intent upon playing the best game of their lives. Norway will be the Philippines’ most dangerous opponents thus far, and if the Filipinas do not go into the final group stage match with sharpened balisongs intent upon playing the best game of their lives, then we are in for a rude awakening to a marauding horde plundering our collective national euphoria.

A Philippine victory over Norway on Sunday would be historic for both countries. For us of course, it would be our first foray into the knockout rounds. For Norway, it would be the first time they will have failed to win a match at a World Cup tournament.

As a nascent footballing nation, win or lose, we must see this as not the end, but just the beginning. From here, we do what it takes to keep qualifying and keep improving our results. Our goal is to be consistent qualifiers, the Philippines to be ever-present in World Cup after World Cup, just like – well – Norway.

Kokoy Severino is a career youth soccer coach and an executive officer of the Football for Peace Movement…