A football penalty shootout is its own little event. When the game remains at a standstill past the 90-minute mark, the outcome could be boiled down to one-on-one matchups between a kicker and the goalkeeper. There’s a unique rule here: each player is only allowed to take one shot. Opposing keepers take turns between the goalposts. Both teams alternately try to net their attempts from the 12-yard line until one team gets the best score of five rounds (or possibly more). Here, a winner is declared in only a matter of minutes.
Penalties don’t happen every time a score is tied during a football match — only when the match is of a particular importance and cannot be tied. This was the case for the AFC Asian Women’s Cup quarterfinals on Jan. 31, after the match concluded at a 1-1 draw between the Philippines and Chinese Taipei.
It took six rounds, with three goals conceded on both sides. Uncertainty still hung in the air until a save from second keeper Olivia McDaniel turned the game in Philippines Women’s National Football Team’s (PWNFT) favor. The next round, the PWNFT forward player Sarina Bolden scored the final, winning goal. And by the time the ball hit directly behind the far left post she was already pumping her first, facing the crowd, running towards her teammates. My screen was filled with the Malditas rushing into a triumphal embrace.
Their win is a big deal, not only because it means they’ll be heading to the Asian Cup semi-finals for the very first time. This match also determined if they’ll qualify for the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup to be held in Australia and New Zealand. Because of this win, they’re now World Cup bound.
At the sound of their screams, I could almost feel a familiar buzzing in my own lungs. Adrenaline pulses through me. “Football is back now baby!” I excitedly told a friend over Discord despite the fact that I hadn’t watched a game in months. It’s been five years since I last stood between the goalposts. I just missed the feeling. Not to sound like I peaked in high school, but there was little that could replace the rush of a hard-earned team victory.
I’m now clearly not a pro. Far from it. In fact, my years playing football soured my attitude towards organized sports. Though it was a kind of Type 2 Fun I missed. My high school team had an inside joke: most of the fields we played contained their own biomes. Some were deserts, swamps, or even managed to be ponds. We’d affectionately named our training pitch “The Sahara” in the many months of the year it was bald. A scrimmage on a hot day kicked up enough dust to leave a layer of grime on our clothes and hair, and we’d walk back from the village park with our color saturation turned down to roughly seventy percent.
The US Women’s National Football team once called off a friendly match in Hawaii due to poor field conditions. In one image tweeted, a player pulls a patch of artificial turf straight from the ground. Later on, in 2019, the USWNT would also file a lawsuit against US Soccer on the grounds of discrimination, right after their World Cup victory. There has long been a jarringly lopsided wage gap between the men’s and women’s teams, despite the fact that the USWNT was more popular and successful. Two years later, they have yet to receive equal wages.
Women’s professional athletes are almost always rewarded with significantly lower pay and less exposure than their male counterparts. In 2019, Hidlyn Diaz publicly urged her Instagram following to help fund her Tokyo 2020 Olympics bid, before she historically won the Philippines’ first gold medal. The country’s most high-profile collegiate sports association, the University Athletic Association of the Philippines (UAAP), doesn’t broadcast any women’s football or basketball matches. Meanwhile, men’s basketball, football, and volleyball are all televised.
Despite the shaky logistics of training camps during the pandemic, little media coverage, and a system so skewed against them — the PWNFT is redefining what is possible for women athletes.
It was after all of this that I choked up at the sight of our players in tears, almost as if in a state of disbelief. Despite the shaky logistics of training camps during the pandemic, little media coverage, and a system so skewed against them — the PWNFT is redefining what is possible for women athletes. So far in their Asian Cup run, they have proven their World Cup bid is far from a fluke, beating out high-ranking competitor Thailand, and winning against Indonesia in a 6-0 landslide. Maybe I haven’t followed football in years, but I’ll be tuned into the Women’s World Cup. So will the rest of the country, I presume.
When spirits were low, my old captain would tell us “to always remember the little girl who fell in love with the game.” To think a young person would be seeing these women onscreen for the first time, being able to imagine such a future for themselves too.
The PH Women's football team qualified for the World Cup — this is a big deal - CNN Philippines
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