Philippines bows to Myanmar in Asean women’s football

Tuesday, October 18, 2011

THE Philippine women's football team Malditas has earned the respect of its more experienced opponent, Myanmar, after putting up some fierce resistance before bowing out.

"Sure we were expecting to score lots of goals but the Philippines have improved a lot and that made it tough for us," Yoshinori Kumada, the chief coach of Myanmar, said in an interview posted in the website of the Asean Football Federation late Monday.

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One of the lowly-regarded squads in the region, the Malditas (Fifa rank: 133) made sure that they won’t be peppered with goals throughout the 90-minute contest as they stood their ground all the way to the finish.

Myanmar (Fifa rank: 46) was only able to convert two goals, courtesy of My Nilar before fans at the National Stadium in Vientiane, Laos.

The closest the Malditas came to scoring a goal was a free kick at the half hour mark but the swerving shot from Natasha Alquiros flew just over the crossbar, according to the AFF.

"We have to improve obviously from this first game where although the team played to instruction, we just did not score enough goals and we have to remedy that for the next match," Kumada said.

The Philippines is bracketed under Group B, which includes Malaysia, Thailand, and Myanmar. The Malditas are set to face Thailand on Wednesday and Malaysia on Friday to end the group matches.

Group A, meanwhile, consists of Vietnam, Singapore, Indonesia and host Laos. (Virgil Lopez/Sunnex)