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View all search resultsPhilippines hopes 'meteoric rise' to World Cup is game-changer
Stajcic calls the team’s journey from "almost ground zero" to the World Cup "miraculous".
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I
n a country obsessed with beauty pageants, basketball and boxing, the Philippine women's team hopes to ignite interest in soccer when it makes the nation's World Cup debut.
Long minnows in the sport, the Philippines has never played at a FIFA World Cup, either the men's or women's.
All that will change on July 21 when the women's side, under Australian coach Alen Stajcic, plays Switzerland in Dunedin, New Zealand.
Stajcic calls the team’s journey from "almost ground zero" to the World Cup "miraculous".
Half of his players do not belong to a professional club and some have been "running around the block on their own" for training, he said.
"It's been a meteoric sort of rise for the team," the 49-year-old told AFP via Zoom.
"The challenge for us is to somehow maintain and sustain that improvement, not be happy with where we got to."
