Issues look promising for the Philippine males’s soccer staff following its semifinal run within the Asean Championship. —MARLO CUETO/INQUIRER.web
The Philippine males’s soccer staff just lately posted an artwork card on social media exhibiting not only a image of its jubilant gamers but in addition a staff picture of counterparts from the ladies’s squad.
“Nice issues forward this coming 12 months for Philippine soccer,” a part of the caption stated.
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There’s motive to be optimistic in 2025 after the lads’s staff got here so near defeating powerhouse Thailand and securing a historic first look within the Asean Mitsubishi Electrical Cup simply earlier than 2024 ended.
With the Asian Cup Qualifiers set to start in March, the Filipino facet is eager on constructing on the good points of the current competitors, particularly with those that couldn’t be part of the Asean Championship anticipated to bolster coach Albert Capellas’ roster.
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New gamers based mostly overseas who’re nonetheless within the strategy of securing their Philippine passports may very well be able to don the nationwide staff shirt in time for the continental qualifiers opener in March.
Formidable group
Jane DeFazio is predicted to determine prominently after making her debut for the Filipinas in 2024.
5 worldwide home windows in the course of the 12 months will pit the Philippines towards Tajikistan, Maldives and Timor-Leste in a bid to prime Group A and qualify for the 2027 Asian Cup in Saudi Arabia.
In the meantime, the Filipinas are going to have a busier 12 months in comparison with 2024 once they adopted a historic first Fifa Girls’s World Cup stint with only a handful of friendlies and a shock administration change that prompted Freddy Gonzalez, Philippine Soccer Federation’s (PFF) director for nationwide groups, to switch Jeff Cheng and do double duties as staff supervisor of each the lads’s and girls’s groups.
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The Filipinas, nonetheless underneath Aussie coach Mark Torcaso, will defend their Asean Soccer Federation (AFF) Girls’s title whereas the qualifiers for the 2026 Girls’s Asian Cup is in September, an occasion that additionally kicks off their quest to safe a return journey to the World Cup.
Captain retires
Just one win was produced by the Philippines in 2024, a 3-0 romp of Jordan within the Pink Women Week in Turkiye, because the Filipinas dropped the opposite six matches, together with twice towards South Korea and one towards Kenya.
Captain Tahnai Annis, one of many key causes for the Philippines’ qualification to the 2023 World Cup, has retired, however the staff is looking forward to having extra younger expertise, significantly Jane DeFazio, whereas Aston Villa’s Maz Pacheco continues to be within the strategy of securing her Philippine passport.
The Philippines can also be going to host the inaugural Fifa Girls’s Futsal World Cup in November, however the make-up of the staff stays unsure at this level following experiences of turmoil surrounding the PFF’s resolution to unexpectedly name for a coaching camp earlier than the top of 2024.
The Pinay5 are set to play this month within the Asian Soccer Confederation Girls’s Futsal Asian Cup Qualifiers in Uzbekistan as a part of their preparations for the World Cup.
Dutch-born Vic Hermans coached the Isabella Bandoja-led squad final November within the AFF Girls’s Futsal Championship at Philsports Enviornment in Pasig Metropolis, the place they fell in need of reaching the third-place match.
