Tough road ahead

The national women’s football team will be fighting for its chances when it faces dangerous South Korea in the AFC Women’s Asian Cup at the Robina Stadium in Robina, Australia on Thursday.

Kick-off starts at 11 a.m. (Manila time) with the Filipinas, ranked No. 41, hoping to pull off an upset over the world No. 21 South Koreans to keep their chances of advancing to the F2027 FIFA World Cup in Brazil alive.

The Filipinas are coming off a heartbreaking 0-1 setback to powerhouse Australia at Perth Stadium, but head coach Mark Torcaso stressed that they can’t afford to wallow for long if they want to remain in contention in this prestigious continental competition.

“Keeping the scoreline low — that’s credit to all the hard work we’ve put in not just over the past month, but over the last six months to a year,” said Torcaso, whose wards are sitting in the third place of Group A with a goal difference of -1.

“It is a bit disappointing but we can’t dwell on it. We need to keep moving forward. While we didn’t get the outcome we wanted, this is an opportunity for us to learn and grow for the next few games.”

The Filipinas have a mountain to scale as South Korea is overflowing with confidence after coming from a 3-0 victory over Iran last Sunday courtesy of goals from Choe Yu Ri, Kim Hye Ri and Ko Yoo Jin.

But despite a great start, head coach Shin Sang Woo expects his girls to step up their scoring production, signaling an all-out war with the gold medalists previous Southeast Asian Games.

“I’d like to thank all my players as we achieved victory, but we need to be more clinical, and I am a bit disappointed today. Our players were quite nervous (in the opening stages), because this was our first match,” Shin said.

“Iran played with six defenders so we needed to stretch the play more and attack the half-spaces more (and I told them this at half-time). The time we have for preparation is really short during such tournaments, so we need to focus on video analysis meetings (and use them to improve).”

The Philippines has not won over South Korea in their past five matches, including a 1-2 loss at the Incheon City Stadium in a friendly match in 2024.

With only the top two teams per group and the two best third-placed teams advancing to the quarterfinals, the Filipinas are in a must-win situation if they don’t want to leave their campaign up to chance.

The most straightforward way for the Philippines to enter the knockout stage is to win its remaining games and secure at least the second spot in the group.

Anything less would mean the Filipinas have to pray they did enough to be one of the two best third place teams in the competition.

The Filipinas will be leaning on defenders like team captain Hali Long, Malea Cesar and Angie Beard to stop the rampaging Koreans with goalkeeper Olivia McDaniel being the final lifeline.