THIS has been a crazy week for football all over the globe.
First, there was the unthinkable comeback by AS Roma to oust FC Barcelona from the Champions League during their quarterfinal tussle. Leading 4-1 on aggregate, five-time champions Barca lost 3-0 away to Roma, giving the erstwhile underperformers from Rome a celebrated ticket to the semifinals.
And still in the Champions League, Juventus nearly pulled off a Roma when it gave defending champions Real Madrid a scare by scoring three unanswered goals to equalize on aggregate, only to be denied a semifinal appearance when the referee awarded Madrid a dubious penalty in the 97th minute. The Los Blancos, of course, converted the spot kick to advance unceremoniously.
The week couldn’t get crazier, though, even if you added Liverpool’s surprising demolition of Premier League leaders Manchester City 5-1 on aggregate in Europe.
What would make the week really insane is much closer to home, which is if the Philippine Women’s National Football Team pulled off an upset against Southeast Asian nemesis Thailand in the penultimate match in Group A of the 2018 AFC Women’s Asian Cup earlier this morning in Jordan.
If they beat Thailand — which I truly hope they did as I am writing this column hours ahead of the game — then the Malditas would have achieved the highest accomplishment of any Philippine national football team in history. Not only would the Malditas advance to an unprecedented semifinal appearance, they would book outright a trip to the 2019 FIFA Women’s World Cup.
If the Malditas lost this morning, they do still have a chance of qualifying for the World Cup via a Fifth place do-or-die match among the groups’ third placers, but that would mean facing either South Korea, Japan or Australia, all of which are ranked 56 places ahead of our fledgling team.
So, yes, beating the Thais would be the easier ticket to the World Cup, not to mention a remarkable semifinal appearance in the AFC Cup.
Whatever this early morning’s result was, the Malditas have already achieved much in their Asian Cup campaign, having beaten much higher-ranked hosts Jordan and holding their own against powerhouse China.
The future can only bright for for this young promising team, as more Filipinos will follow their matches in the days, weeks and months to come. How much more if they did win this morning. Wouldn’t that just be incomparably insane?