The Philippine Women’s National Football Team is preparing to compete in 3 major tournaments this 2025.
Credits: Official Facebook Page of Philippine Women’s National Football Team
Dominate Southeast Asia
The PWNFT are aiming not just to play in 3 major Southeast Asian tournaments this 2025 but also to win and become the champions of these competitions.
Credits: Official Website of AFC Women’s Asian Cup
First would be the AFC Women’s Asian Cup 2026 Qualifiers wherein the Men’s team are also participating in and have won their first game against Maldives as they currently are 1-0. The next tournament is 2025 ASEAN MSIG Serenity Cup, where the Filipinas plan to defend their title. Lastly, the Southeast Asian Games would be the last tournament the PWNFT would join this year and are planning to get the gold medal.
PWNFT is grouped in Group G for the Asian Cup Qualifiers as they will battle Cambodia, Hong Kong, and Saudi Arabia which will take place this May to June. The Philippines is heavily favored to come out on top as they are World Ranked No. 41.
Hong Kong is No. 80, Cambodia is at No. 118 and Saudi Arabia is No. 168. Any loss for the Philippines in this competition is a straight upset and disappointment.
Only the Top 1 teams in all of the 8 groups will have a chance to compete in the AFC Asian Cup which will be played in Australia. Also, Australia has secured its place in the upcoming Women’s Asian Cup as the host nation, joining the top three finishers from the 2022 tournament—China, South Korea, and Japan—who claimed first, second, and third place respectively.
Formerly known as the ASEAN Serenity Cup, an insurance company named MSIG has become the first major sponsor of the tournament as it’s now renamed as the ASEAN MSIG Serenity Cup. But whatever their name is, the PWNFT will do everything they can to defend their championship in 2022.
The Philippines defeated the 3x time champion Vietnam in the Semifinals last 2022 with a score of 4 – 0 and the 4x time champion Thailand in the Finals. This 2025 there would be 8 teams divided into 2 groups in a single-round-robin format which allows the Top 2 teams from each group to move to the Semi Finals.
Aside from the Philippines, other qualified countries are Australia, Cambodia, Indonesia, Myanmar, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.
Meanwhile the SEA Games is scheduled to be played from December 9 to 20 with Thailand as the host country.
Domination in the Friendlies
To prepare for these competitions, the Philippines started the year having 2 friendly games against the United Arab Emirates wherein they completely dominated.
They won their first game last April 4 with a final score of 4 – 1 and ended their second game with a score of 4 – 0 last April 8.
Defender Hali Long scored the first goal in their game, while Forward Chandler McDaniel doubled the lead 2-0. The other Forward Meryll Serrano made it 3-0 as Chandler then scored the last point for the Philippines.
In their second game, it was a shared scoring as Midfielder Sara Eggesvik scored the first goal. Then Forward Carleigh Frilles had the second goal for the Philippines as both Chandler and Long scored again the last 2 goals in order to win the game.
In an interview by ABS CBN, Head coach Mark Torcaso was satisfied with the results they were expecting in the friendlies.
“Playing UAE now is extremely good, because we’re going to come up against Cambodia, Hong Kong, and Saudi Arabia [in the Asian Cup qualifiers].They’re going to do the same thing in the qualifiers, so we wanted to be prepared for that. “We stayed disciplined, we stayed patient. The girls were very good in possession, and we scored some really good goals.”
Lastly, he mentioned that “It’s about building towards the Asian Cup qualifiers, and we’re really looking forward to that.”
The Asian Cup Qualifiers are set to be played from May 26 to June 3 where the PWNFT will have their first 2 games in front of the home crowd.
