Filipinas coach want equal opportunity for local, foreign players

MANILA, Philippines – Philippine women’s national football team head coach Mark Torcaso is looking to even the playing field between local and foreign based players in the national team pool after holding a training camp at the Rizal Memorial Stadium earlier this week.

In an effort to identify the next generation of local talent, Torcaso invited a good mix of veteran, returning and new players to make up a 30-woman squad in the days-long training camp. But more than having an eye for new talent, it was also about offering Philippine-based players more opportunities.

With the local football scene still needing work to sustain an established calendar of play, the main goal is also to raise the standard of play here at home.

“I think it’s just important to acknowledge and recognize that we need to get older players on a good level. There shouldn’t be a comparison of local players and foreign players -- we should just be picking the best players possible. And if players come from here, or they come from overseas, they come from there,” said Torcaso as the team’s local camp concluded at the Rizal Memorial Stadium on Friday. 

“We just pick the best players that we can but we just want to bridge the gap between the training sessions and the resources sometimes that the players get here to be as good as what some of the girls gain in professional clubs in Europe and that’s what we’re trying to do constantly.”

The camp was held during a time that is not a FIFA window, which meant that a lot of the foreign-based players were unable to join because of their club commitments. But even then, Torcaso said that he wanted to work on the players who were available.

With a couple of tournaments slated later this year, Torcaso wanted to widen his horizons – as he also invited a number of youth players to the senior camp.

Even if the core of the FIFA Women’s World Cup team is still intact, the Aussie coach is getting ready for the next generation.

“This is the first stage of it, [preparing for the future] — is making sure we have a large pool of players, we have as many players as possible to pick from and we’re not gonna leave any player unturned or unavailable, we wanna have every opportunity to give every single player an opportunity to play. If it’s local or international,” insisted Torcaso. 

“That road obviously started three to six months ago… For us, it’s about bridging the gap with those nations and that’s why we had some good games against South Korea, even Scotland and Finland. So, we wanna constantly bridge the gap between us and obviously the teams that are in Asia.”

Among the newcomers in the team were some youth players called up midway through the camp like teenagers Louraine Evangelista and Anaiah Sotto of Tuloy FC and Kaya FC, respectively.

Though there were no specifics that Torcaso pointed to, he was happy overall at how the camp transpired.

“You know, honestly, a lot of the girls stood out from where we saw them last time. It was not anyone that I could single out, obviously, you know having some of the World Cup players and train with some of the girls locally, it lifted the level — fantastic in training. So there was a lot of players that we were able to see on a different level,” said the tactician. 

“We actually identified two or three players throughout the week that we watched some of the games, the finals that they played in the local cup competition, that weren’t initially part of the camp that we introduced midway through the camp… So, it’s the blend of players, it just brings the level up and that’s what we wanna do. Just constantly bring the level up.”

With the Manila camp wrapped up, the Filipinas are expected to reconvene in October when they will play in a tournament in Turkey with foes like Jordan and Haiti.