Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, January 26) – The Philippine women’s football team will head to their final 2022 AFC Women’s Asian Cup group stage match on Thursday with the same mindset of winning one game at a time.
“Our mindset hasn’t changed at all. Our mindset going in this is to win, to make out of our group. Our goal is to win against Indonesia, place second in our group,” team co-captain Hali Long said Wednesday.
A victory against the winless Indonesian squad and a loss by Thailand against the undefeated Australian side will guarantee a quarterfinals berth for the Philippines. The Filipinas and Thais are currently tied at second place of Group B with three points.
A win by the Filipinas, who will face Indonesia at 10:00 p.m. (Philippine time), will give the best group stage performance in the country’s history of competing in the continental tournament.
The Philippines never won two games in their past AFC Women’s Asian cup group stage campaigns.
Long said their upset 1-0 win against Southeast Asian football giant Thailand last Jan. 21 and their humbling experience in a 4-0 loss at the hands of world no. 11 Australia last Jan. 24 raised the team’s expectations in performing their best to achieve the country’s first ever World Cup berth.
“I think the Thailand game set the bar pretty high. The Australia game, set the bar even higher for ourselves. We definitely gave ourselves a challenge for the next game to raise that bar even higher, regardless of what is Indonesia’s rank. It all becomes personal at this point, personal to ourselves and to our team as a whole, on what we want to show next,” the defender said.
Philippines head coach Alen Stajcic could not be any prouder for their outstanding showings in their last two games.
“The effort was outstanding, against a really, truly world class team,” Stajcic said after their defeat against his Australian compatriots.
“We proved that we can be a hard team, a tough team to beat, a resilient team. (We) really showed some qualities that can push us to the next level,” he added.
The top five teams in the 2022 AFC Women’s Asian Cup will be granted a ticket to the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup, to be jointly hosted by Australia and New Zealand.
