February 28 ------ The Philippine women’s national football team Filipinas held a successful eight-day training camp at home capped by an intra-squad exhibition match that saw them inaugurate the Mall of Asia Football Pitch. After a lengthy period of non-competition last year, the Filipinas are gearing up for a busy year that begins with a pocket tournament in China in April.
From there, national team head coach Mark Torcaso is looking to have the expanded 33-women pool participating in highly-competitive environments in every FIFA window for their build up to the 2027 Women’s World Cup in Brazil. “Obviously, there’s a lot of new faces in the environment. But this was an opportunity for us to build a training camp to prepare us for the year as we have a busy year,” said Torcaso post-match. “It was really about building and creating a nice pool of players. And it’s building towards another World Cup which has Asian Cup, Asian Cup Qualifiers, and AFF Championship, and SEA Games in between. “Everyone saw all the talent that came in and now it’s just about building on our group of players over the new couple of weeks to make sure we’ve got a strong team going until the back end of this year,” he added.
As far as goals are concerned, Torcaso is left impressed with the expanded pool that came in and what it could mean for the future of the national team that had its core members played against a mix of fresh and returning faces in the week-long camp. With the Filipinas spread around Europe, South America, and beyond playing for their respective mother clubs, striker Sarina Bolden was one of the few dealing with a minor injury which limited her participation in the competitive training camp. However unfortunate it was, the Australian mentor is fully committed to making everything work to bring the Filipinas back to the World Cup where it made a historical debut in 2023.
Proper competition begins for the Filipinas in the ASEAN Women’s Championship (formerly AFF Women’s Championship) where they are set to defend their maiden title. It only gets challenging from there as the 41st-ranked Philippines sees action in the Asian Cup Qualifiers, where the draw is scheduled to take place on March 21. “The main thing for me was to have a good competitive group training together. I'm not saying that they weren't competitive in the past, but it was about developing our playing style against good competition. And I thought it was the best thing for us was to do that with players that we could be looking at for the future for our national team. So hence why we went with, you know, 33 players,” said Torcaso. “So while we're creating competitive training environment and a competitive match tonight, we can also see some of the players that we could potentially have part of our national team for the future. So definitely ticked what I wanted because out of those 10 players, I was impressed with all of them. Out of our group of players that we have including the regulars I was impressed with them as well. Obviously, it was unfortunate we got some injuries, but definitely a tick and definitely satisfied, but we wanna keep building on this,” he continued.
Aside from a pocket tournament in China, Torcaso also revealed that opportunities to play against other countries have opened up which is why he is determined to make every international window count. With the newly built football pitch, facilities are now the least of the national team’s worries as the MOA Sky promises to accommodate the demands of their camp. “I’ve never played a football game in a rooftop before. The exciting part is that we have a facility for our girls to be playing and training on. Respectful to Rizal, the surface wasn’t always the best. Now that’s refurbished as well. It’s great we have two facilities. When we come home, I know it’s been a problem in the past is where to train somewhere in the Philippines. Now we have this place we can utilize. The plan is to be here as often as we can.”
Source: gmanetwork.com
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