The Philippine Women's National Football Team. Photo from PFF
MANILA – The Philippine Women's National Football Team may have ended its title defense in the ASEAN MSIG Serenity Cup 2025, but head coach Mark Torcaso believes there are still positives to take away from the tournament.
The Filipinas entered the MSIG Serenity Cup with a huge chip on their shoulder as defending champions, while fielding a younger and different squad compared to their 2022 victory.
A number of players from the 2022 championship team were unable to suit up due to injury and the tournament being outside the FIFA window.
The Filipinas still put up a gallant stand in the group stage, but were sent packing early after settling for a draw against Myanmar. The draw was not enough to put them through the knockouts and extend their title bid.
"We obviously came into this competition with some younger players, some inexperienced players. And in the end one of those young players actually scored a goal for us. So this was a really good learning curve for all of us, our team, our coaches to see some of our younger players play," Torcaso said in the post-match press conference on Wednesday.
Despite having a different squad in this tour of duty, Torcaso commended the young players for stepping up in the competition.
"I’m extremely proud of every one of those girls and I know that our entire country will be proud of them. We had a number of them score goals, we had a number of them play a lot of minutes," he said.
"And as a head coach for the national team, it’s a very important thing for me to see that. It makes me make good decisions for these players for Asian Cup next year," Torcaso shared.
Among the young Filipinas who stood out were 17-year-old Nina Mathelus who scored the equalizer against Myanmar and 16-year-old Tea Pidding who made her debut in the match against Australia U-23.
READ: Draw against Myanmar not enough as Filipinas bow out of MSIG Serenity Cup
"We saw Nina Mathelus come on and did a really good job. [She] still needs to learn and get some understanding of her position but scored a goal. We saw Tea Pidding in the last game and start as a 16-year-old. And we just wanna have many players available for the Asian Cup," Torcaso said.
"We saw some really nice things in this window and we’re really happy. We wanna just keep getting better and we want these young players to keep getting better," he pointed out.
With the MSIG Serenity Cup over and done for the Filipinas, they will now turn their focus to the Southeast Asian Games in December and the 2026 AFC Women's Asian Cup in March.
The Filipinas were drawn into a tough Group A with host and world No. 15 Australia, world No. 21 Korea Republic and world No. 68 IR Iran.
With six months left until the Asian Cup, the Filipinas will first ramp up preparations for the SEA Games in the run up to 2026.
"We’re lucky as a country because we’ve got SEA Games to play. A lot of the Asian, the other Asian countries don’t have a SEA Games to prepare for the Asian Cup. We’re gonna use the SEA Games and maximize that and try to play five games in that," Torcaso said.
"We’ll have all our national players available for that... so we’re really looking forward to playing that really tough and competition," he added.