The Inside Story of the Philippines' incredible journey to World Cup history
From a team of players without professional clubs to winning a World Cup game in 18 months. This is the in-depth story of one of the tournament's greatest achievements...
When Alen Stajcic made a return to the women’s international game just over 18 months ahead of the 2023 World Cup in his home country of Australia – and New Zealand – he described the decision to become head coach of the Philippines as “like starting from ground zero”.
Despite being the 13th most populated nation in the world, with just over 117m inhabitants, the Philippines has never hit it off where football is concerned, with the likes of basketball and volleyball the dominant sports in the country.
When the former Matildas head coach took the reins, he inherited a squad of players who largely weren’t professional. Many were USA college students with Filipino heritage, some were at lower league clubs dotted around the world/.
Some didn’t have a club full stop.
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Captain and most capped player, Hali Long, was one of several who played in the underdeveloped domestic league and even played 7-a-side to keep her ticking over, while the nation had never been close to a World Cup, which is what was tasked of Stajcic with the backing of benefactor Jefferson Cheng, a Filipino businessman.
When Stajcic officially joined from his role as Central Coast Mariners manager in the Australian A-League, it was just three months out from the 2022 Asian Cup, to be held in January, which would serve as qualifiers for the World Cup.
After not qualifying at all in 2006, 2008, 2010 or 2014, and finishing just sixth in 2018, the Philippines were up against it, with only a semi-final spot guaranteeing a spot in the World Cup without the prospect of facing the inter-continental play-offs.
Drawn into a group with Asian giants Australia, and a Thailand side who had been at the World Cup in 2019, their prospects were up against the wall already, and Stajcic called on trusted cohorts to help him in his quest to take the team of unknowns to the world stage, firstly in his trusted assistant from Central Coast Mariners, fellow Aussie Nahuel Arrarte.
“You have to have a vision in mind for what it looks like at the end and ours was to get to the World Cup…”
“I was there from pretty much day one,” says Arrarte. “Once Staj got offered the job, he pretty much asked me straight away if I wanted to be a part of it and we took it on board.”
With the tournament a mere months away, Arrarte admits the early process was “pretty full-on”, as the pair headed straight out to the US for camps to analyse potential players they could bring into the squad.
They also had, as Arrarte puts it, “limited staff and limited resources”, but they were soon joined by another of their former colleagues, strength and conditioning coach, Luca Tonetti.
After an eight-week camp in California, they went straight to the Asia Cup in India, knowing full well their preparation had been less than ideal, and the team had been put together like a jigsaw puzzle at short notice.
The World Cup felt a long way away.
“With me and Staj, we’ve never been afraid of hard work and take on a challenge people might think is out of reach,” chuckles Arrarte. “I worked with Staj with the Matildas and the Mariners and I think it was one of those things, him having been in football a long time, and me the NPL and A-League academies, you’re still going into the unknown, but a little better prepared.
“You have to have a vision in mind for what it looks like at the end and ours was to get to the World Cup. Having been in a professional set up, you know what it has to come close to looking like, but you still come up against daily challenges you have to deal with.
“The players and staff were very driven to make that dream come true for the nation. It was hard, but very rewarding to go into battle with people who had that mindset to overcome obstacles.”
Tonetti, who joined after a meeting with Stajcic in a café back home in Australia, was tasked with bringing a squad where fitness had to be brought up to scratch was a priority, especially if they were going to get through the Asia Cup and into a position to qualify for the World Cup.
“We planned what to do,” says Tonetti. “In the first training it was like ‘Oh God, we cannot do this!’. It was so hard, players were getting injured, they were not used to anything we wanted to do.
“The quality wasn’t great. We had to build up really, really slowly. We saw individually some people had something, but there was some friction. Half the team was American, half were Filipino, some couldn’t come with us because of visa issues, so we just tried to unify the group from day one.
“From my position, I’m lucky because I don’t have to make decisions on who does and doesn’t play, I could become more of a friend for them and we built some great relationships.”
Tonetti jokes that conditioning was his “second job – my first was to keep them happy!” as the staff scrambled to make the squad gel together ahead of the crunch opening match against Thailand, which would go a long way to decide who qualified behind heavy group favourites, Australia.
“I told the girls ‘If we make the World Cup, just shave my hair…”
“I had to learn how to listen, because I’d worked a lot with men, and they had different needs and wants,” Tonetti admits. “The communication for me was massive, trying to understand what they all needed.
“Alen is really talented and had a lot of experience, so he could understand early which were important players to talk with to try and get inside their mindset and what they needed. By that point, most of us were men. We had a physiotherapist who was a woman, but the players didn’t have a female figure in the staff, so I took that role [confidant] on a little bit.
“India made things even tougher with the COVID-19 situation. When we got there India got locked down because of the pandemic, so we were so careful about it because we couldn’t afford to lose time.”
The Philippines won the first game 1-0, through a Chandler McDaniel strike, one half of a sister-duo in the squad alongside goalkeeper Olivia, who would go on to prove a crucial figure in their qualification hopes.
Tonetti admits that first win helped to “unify the team” and created a “strong bond” within the squad as suddenly belief grew of what they could potentially achieve.
A not overly unexpected 4-0 defeat to Australia followed, but with just lowly Indonesia left to play, they were well-placed to get to the quarter-finals, which would put them just one game from an historic achievement.
“I think just after the second game I told the girls ‘If we make the World Cup, just shave my hair,” Tonetti laughs.
Arrarte offers a further insight into how they set about putting into place all they could in such a short period before the Asia Cup kicked off.
“The players already had an abundance of self-belief, it was about channelling that energy into the technical, tactical, physical components required at that level,” he says.
“When you have people who are like-minded and willing to sacrifice towards their goal, it doesn’t matter what walk of life you come from if you pull together.
“The one message we constantly asked of players, staff and even the federation was we needed a collective buy in to make that dream a reality. We worked very, very hard from a tactical perspective to make sure we were able to compete and give ourselves the maximum opportunity to compete.
“Like I said, having been at the Olympics as a staff, we had an idea what that looked like, and the girls had that self-belief, that sacrifice to make it happen. It was a collective buy-in and that was constantly driven, that not any one person would get us through on their own.”
In the quarter-finals, the Philippines would face Chinese Taipei, with the winner guaranteed a spot at the World Cup.
After Quinley Quezada put them in the lead, a late equaliser subsequently sent the game to penalties, and after both Long and Jessica Miclat failed to convert, Chinese Taipei had the chance to win it, but were denied by the exploits of goalkeeper McDaniel, who then subsequently scored a penalty herself.
Three failed penalties in a row from their opposition left the Philippines to celebrate hysterically at what they’d achieved, just three months after Stajcic and co took over the team.
“When we did it, I went on the pitch with the clippers, but they didn’t do it!” laughs Tonetti.
With 18 months until the tournament, the staff set about preparing the team the best they could for what laid ahead.
Another coach who was familiar to Stajcic, former Future Matildas and U20s assistant coach Stevan Antonic, joined as a performance analyst, to help assist preparations for the tournament in March 2022.
“Wycout, InStat, they had nothing on these girls. Very few even played football…”
“It all happened through Naz [Nahuel Arrarte], who I’ve known since I was a kid,” says Antonic. “We always kept in touch through football and he was the one who put me in touch with the Philippines.
“Staj had put the Future Matildas programme I was working in together, so when he got in touch saying they needed an analyst the simple answer was ‘yes’.”
They’re reputation and stature as a rank outsider though made life tough for Antonic. Still ranked outside the world’s top 50, he admits there was very little footage of the team to watch, bar the Asian Cup games which had just preceeded his appointment.
“Wycout, InStat, they had nothing on these girls. Very few even played football, it was USA college or local schools. For us, it became about finding girls who had Filippino heritage and could get a passport.
“We sat down and watched anything we could of players. YouTube, Twitter, speaking to the right people within the Philippines to try and get some of these players their passports. We went to Europe, to the US, we went everywhere to find people and I think the longest one was Angela Beard, who we all actually knew, and she was an Aussie, but it took a while until get she got her passport.”
Having been another to work alongside Stajcic for a period at Central Coast Mariners, Antonic admits he had a head starting in knowing the coach’s philosophy and style of play, and set about putting together clips and highlights of opponents, their key players, how they could exploit their weaknesses and which of their strengths could hurt their team.
Keeping the team together regularly was vital too, and they set about a rigorous programme of camps and games to build up to the tournament, and were backed by Cheng and the federation when they laid out what they wanted to do.
“We had a couple of months after the Asia Cup where we didn’t really know how it would go,” admits Tonetti. “Alen created what brought us to the World Cup. Enough budget, finances to invest in what we needed. Everyone worked really hard in the preparation camps, monitoring people 24/7, because we had players all around the world in different time zones.
“I was sending training programmes out to them because most players didn’t even have a team, a lot were just doing individual training sessions and running. We could monitor via Strava, they had an app to log their gym programmes and slowly, slowly behind the scenes Alen and Nahuel did a lot of scouting to find any new player in every corner of the world who could help us.”
He adds, “In the Philippines, it was 40 degrees, 90% humidity. They were running on concrete, you couldn’t do it, but the programmes paid off, we got a lot of fitter and ready for the World Cup.
“Anything they needed, we were giving it to them, whoever it was on the staff, whatever they needed we gave it. They had no excuses. Adidas came in to do the kit launches and they started to feel like professional footballers.
“They began to help each other and their culture started to trickle into the US players too. They did everything together, they would even go to church together. We had a good preparation, we did a pre-season camp if you like and we worked harder and harder, even if they were tired. If you weren’t fit, I’m sorry, you go home.”
Tonetti admits almost every camp “we had new players coming in”, and in July 2022 – 12 months out from the tournament – the team made more history by becoming AFF Champions for the first time, a tournament for South East Asian sides which saw them beat Thailand in the final, in a tournament which included fellow World Cup debutants Vietnam, as well as Australia’s U23s.
Success though brought new challengers, as the Philippines as a nation started to stand up and take notice of their new heroes, who had not only won the tournament, but done it home soil in front of their home fans who were only now being introduced to the potential of their women’s football team, in a nation where football is not even close to the dominant sport.
“I think it was then they started believing they could win, but that’s when they started to feel the pressure,” says Tonetti. “The fans supported us from day one, but when we lost games the players started reading the comments from fans.
“People were taking more interest, asking why people weren’t playing, that was all new to us. Players would cry, consistently, because it was all new to them.”
Tonetti recalls when things came to a head when the team went to Chile at the end of 2022 for two friendly matches, and the combination of their new-found status, as well as the knowledge the tournament and a decision of who would and wouldn’t be selected was getting ever closer, took its toll.
“When we played in Chile, we had some issues,” he admits. “When we got there, I remember speaking to players at the camp because the vibe wasn’t good and it was when people started getting cut and players were feeling the pressure. From media, from fans, but also within the group.
“There was seven months left to the World Cup and everything was ramping up, they knew if they didn’t perform they’d be cut. We lost against Chile and players were getting stressed, every single player was crying, not for the result, but for the pressure.
“Straight after we had another game and performed really well. That was our first taste of what to expect, then players asked for more, they wanted more training, even those in professional teams in Europe and in Australia. ‘Luca, give us a programme, don’t tell anyone, we just want to do everything we can’.”
In January 2023, Stajcic and Arrarte took over the running of the newly launched U17s and U20s squads to try and nurture the future talent they were also unearthing, keen to continue the legacy and create an even better squad in the future, filled with players who had been properly trained and developed, rather than cherry-picked from around the world.
Their schedule was brutal. Stajcic spent time in England on holiday with family, but he was also working, scouting potential talent, before flying straight to Spain for the Pinatar Cup which saw the first team face European opposition in Wales, Scotland and Iceland.
From there, there were more camps in the USA and then it was to Guam for a youth tournament, the schedule was gruelling for any coach, but this was the commitment they were willing to put in to have a successful World Cup.
“The preparation leading into it, to travel to different continents and expose the players to different types of football, that was invaluable,” says Arrarte. “We started moving up the rankings, started getting exposure to South American football, European football, because we didn’t know who our group would be.
“We played AFF, we played the Southeast Asian Games, there was a lot of opportunity to play games and understand what would be required to compete.”
The Philippines lost only by a one-goal margin to each of Wales and Scotland in Spain, before competing in 2024 Olympic qualifiers which saw them win all three of their round one games, and that was followed by the Southeast Asian Games Arrarte mentions, which put a dent in their preparations for the World Cup, just two months out from the tournament.
“When we did the final call, there were a lot of tears, a lot of relief…”
The team finished third in their group, behind Vietnam and Myanmar and didn’t make the semi-finals. Just months out from facing established world class opposition like Norway, along with Switzerland and New Zealand, which made up their World Cup group, it was a blow to confidence ahead of a tournament they’d been approaching in buoyant mood.
“Before you knew it, teams could scout us and that was difficult for us,” admits Antonic. “We could scout teams better than before, but we knew we were going into games where teams hadn’t seen us, but after the Southeast Asian Games and Asia Cup etc, that changed, which made life a little bit difficult.”
Another element added into the equation was it was time to cut down the squad from the initial provisional list to the final 23, something none of the staff was looking forward to, such was the journey everyone involved had been on together in just under 18 months.
“When we did the final call, there were a lot of tears, a lot of relief,” says Tonetti. “It was hard when we had to start cutting the team down, people had been together a while by then, so that was tough.
“Myself and the physiotherapist spent a lot of time speaking to those who got cut about having a chance to make it back to the team, but they were young and not used to that situation, fighting to get their spot back wasn’t really the mentality. That was a bit challenging in managing the group as it evolved.”
When the team arrived at their base camp in New Zealand, they’d planned to prepare by facing the best, and they did so by arranging two friendlies, one with defending world champions USA, and bronze medallists Sweden.
They lost both, but weren’t embarrassed in either, and headed into their opening game against European side Switzerland full of hope and determination, knowing they could fall back on their underdog tag.
There was though an unpleasant twist, as they opened their hotel room curtains to a scene of lockdown after a mass shooting had taken place that same morning in Auckland, with teams locked in their bases until further notice.
When they were released, and the game beckoned, there were scenes of tears of joy and emotion on the Philippines bench, as a dream which for a time felt only that, became a reality.
“I know it’s clichéd, but we wanted to win,” chuckles Antonic. “The whole preparation, travelling to Central America, Europe, the USA, the teams we played, the idea was to get out of the group.
“We were under no illusions it would be super, super difficult, but we’d played New Zealand the year before and we were leading before we gave away a penalty. We lost 2-1, but we were missing a few players and we knew that could be a key game for us.
“Norway have some of the best players in the world, Switzerland have plenty of key players. The mindset in the first game was don’t lose, and we were unfortunate. I don’t think anybody gave us any chance in that tournament, but there were moments in that first game we didn’t capitalise on and then gave away a penalty.”
Arrarte adds “I think the mindset was always preparing ourselves to try and win games. The tactical component might differ, I think we were underdogs in every game, that was nothing new having that underdog tag on us.
“We knew we had some girls still not even in clubs, who were now competing against Champions League players. That was always going to be difficult, but the girls had been exposed to these types of countries. We’d played USA, Sweden etc, and we’d also played New Zealand.
“We had an idea of what that could look like. We tried to utilise or make a positive connection with the emotions in everything, the atmosphere. We had a lot of Filipinos there, our girls engaged with the crowd and used that to their advantage. The girls rode that atmosphere really well and turned it into positive energy. The mentality was to set ourselves up for a chance to win, the tactics might vary during the games.”
Tonetti adds “We were 62nd in the FIFA rankings, Switzerland was in the top 30 and we were upset we didn’t win, that was our mentality.”
After a 2-0 defeat to Switzerland, the game against the co-hosts on their home soil was pivotal to their qualification hopes.
New Zealand had stunned Norway in the opening game, but had been in bad form themselves coming into the tournament, and with none of the eight debutant nations registering a win in the first round of games, it was also a chance to make history.
“The New Zealand game…it was stay in it as long as we could,” admits Antonic. “We knew we could last 90 minutes, we had players who could last 90 minutes and we just needed to nick a goal, which we did. The save from Olivia at the end to give us our first win, that was unbelievable.”
As Stajcic tried to remain calm on the touchline, the scenes were among the most joyful the tournament saw as Sarina Bolden’s sole goal, combined the stunning aforementioned save from McDaniel at the death, sealed a first ever win at a World Cup at just their second attempt, for a nation which had pieced its squad together piece by piece over the preceding 18 months.
“The stars aligned against New Zealand,” reflects Tonetti. “When Sarina scored, it was amazing. Playing the co-hosts in New Zealand, VAR cancels their goal near the end, Olivia makes a massive save.
“I had a close relationship with Olivia but if someone would tell me I wouldn’t bet $1 she would save that, it was just too hard, it was amazing. That was the Philippines, Sarina at one end, Olivia at the other.”
“Olivia saved a penalty in the Asia Cup and Sarina scored the last penalty, to get us to the World Cup, then at the World Cup it was the other way around. That was written. At that point, it felt our story had come full circle.”
Arrarte adds “To win a game in a World Cup when you’ve got nations who have been to a few, to do that in our second game was very special. That group had an amazing journey just to get there, a lot of the staff as well, from the games to the logistics to everything that needs to be done behind the scenes, it was very special.
“It’s like a drug, you want more of that emotion, it’s a very surreal experience when you attach to it the journey that took us there.”
It gave them a chance to do the unthinkable against Norway in the final round of group games, with all four nations still able to progress, but the quality of the likes of Barcelona’s Caroline Graham Hansen told, in an emphatic 6-0 win which was no slight on the minnows of the tournament, who went home with heads held high.
“The last game, I don’t know if we ran out of legs,” says Antonic. “We knew we could get a result, but to get out of the group? I think realistically we just didn’t want to get embarrassed, and just perform to a level which would shock the world, and I honestly think we did that. They moved to 38th in the world and that’s unbelievable, in two years to move up 30 plus spots.
Tonetti adds “You want to go through the group, but against Norway they were just better than us, we couldn’t deny that. But we still had heart, even at half-time we believed if we scored next we could make their lives hard.
“When it finished 6-0, but you still see all these Filippino fans cheering for us, the players in tears, I was the happiest person in the world. I didn’t care about the result, these girls showed the world they were hungry to work hard and if you do that, you can achieve anything.
“When everything finished the day after, I couldn’t even cry. I was happy, but sad, we didn’t know what was going to happen.”
It looked as though post-tournament there was at least a clear blueprint for future success, with Cheng still at the helm, but soon after the World Cup ended came the bombshell Stajcic would be moving on, returning to Australia and a return to the A-League with Perth Glory.
Many have once again gone with him, such is their loyalty to their group work, but all look back fondly on what was a brief, but brilliant time spent with the Philippines team who became national heroes.
“I’d always say to Staj I’d back him,” says Antonic. “If he was there, I’d be there, if he wasn’t, I’d be done.
“We didn’t really know. In the last week of the World Cup we had a bit of a do with some delegates, had a good dinner and chat and the next day we all flew off. A few phone calls were made, Staj got the job in Perth and asked if I wanted to come and I said yes.
“It was bittersweet because we were building something special, we already had. Dave, Naz, myself, we all had the mindset to kick on, but we came in for Staj and my mindset was wherever Staj went, I went. We left on really good terms, and you never say never. We still talk to Jeff and all the staff there, catch up when we can, but it wasn’t planned.”
And whatever happens, the tournament has left behind incredible moments for all of them they will never forget, as well as creating a new legacy for women’s football in the country to grow in the future.
“That game, the Norway game, at Eden Park, and 75-80% of the crowd Filippino, I still get goose bumps talking about it. You never believe in your wildest dreams you can touch a nation as much as we did in a sport which had no interest.
“Volleyball players have more followers on social media than the Kardashians. None of it makes sense, but it was unbelievable. Their tour rolls on, there are girls who are celebrities now. Hali hasn’t played official football for however long, she played 7-a-side football with the boys, the college girls hadn’t played at all, the ones in Europe weren’t starters. Sarina and Quinley played a combined 200 minutes in Japan all season.
“To achieve what they did, I don’t think that will be replicated again in a long time.”
Tonetti adds “We went our separate ways. I’m still really close with the assistant strength and conditioning coach, now she’s the main person there, she was like my sister.
“The relationships in the staff were amazing, it was just amazing. That was tough for a couple of months to come out of, but we still catch up and have a chat together, still chat to the players. But it was the pinnacle of my career, not just the football experience, but just incredible people. All my Instagram friends are now Filippino, I open it up and I’m like ‘who is this person?!’ That’s my story.
Arrarte too moved on, once again taking on the role of Stajcic’s assistant in Perth, but he hopes between their work with both the senior teams and creating the new youth programme, they have left behind a foundation for the sport to continue to both grow and thrive in the future, and become regulars at World Cups.
“We joked about calling it ‘The Beatles Tour’ because the girls were everywhere…”
“We spent a lot of time unearthing those youngsters who could help, and to see some of them now come through was very important. It’s important to see a continuous impact, to make sure they continue to believe they can progress and hopefully get additional funding to assist the local programmes there to grow the game.
“Basketball is the number one sport there and it’s a constant battle against that there, but we showed that with some structure, belief and investment why can’t it continue? And hopefully they see that and continue to invest and assist the game, especially at grassroots.
“They touched the hearts of a lot of people and it has to be the beginning, not the end. We played our part, not just at senior level, but trying to grow the youth teams too.”
While a lot has changed, there is some familiarity in that they’ve been replaced at the helm by another Aussie, one familiar to several of the former staff members, in Mark Torcaso.
Torcaso guided Western United to the A-League Grand Final in their first season as a franchise team in the league before being appointed at the end of the season.
The Philippines won’t be at the Olympics, but now attentions turn to the next World Cup and a new foundation to be built for future success, with the nation now ranked well within the FIFA top 50.
“Mark is a good guy, we know him through the league here and we caught up with him when they played Olympic qualifiers in Perth,” says Antonic. “There was never a billboard who had a women’s footballer on, or even a footballer in general. Even the men don’t get the publicity we do now. When we won the AFF it was ridiculous at home, they were everywhere.
“We joked about calling it ‘The Beatles Tour’ because the girls were everywhere, they went to celebrities overnight. There’s such a big diaspora of Filippinos across the world, we went to Spain for the Pinatar Cup and we had fans there.
“We touched a nation, no matter where we were, they followed and if they tap into the youth and get a few more players from abroad of a certain level, the U17s and U20s who I worked with, the U17s in particular have a really good group. I think the future looks bright if it’s nurtured right, it could be a really good generation coming through.”
The legacy goes beyond that too, and even now close to home where the majority of the staff have come together again on the west coast of Australia.
Where the team train is shared with Perth Glory’s women’s team, and the staff have managed to use their contacts to find new homes for both Jessica Cowart and Quinley Quezada, who have joined the club, and they all still see each other regularly.
Legacies that widespread and far-reaching are hard to come by, and even harder to sustain, and the story of the Philippines is one of the most heart-warming the women’s game will see.
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