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…