Call me a crab. But I don’t think the Filipino women’s soccer team that won a game at the Fifa Women’s World Cup deserves to be called Filipino. At all.
Of the 23 players, only one – yes, just one – can be considered homegrown.
Anicka Castañeda is a product of De La Salle University, however she now plays for the Mount Druitt Town Rangers in Australia.
The rest are “imported.” Eighteen were born in the United States.
Many have foreign-sounding names.
When Sarina Bolden made her “historic” goal for the Philippines against New Zealand, I was like, Sarina who?
It’s like what happened at the Miss Universe pageant a few years ago when two Filipinas took home the crown: Pia Wurtzbach in 2015 and Catriona Gray in 2018.
I don’t know about you, but I don’t know many Wurtzbach’s in Cebu City, let alone any Gray’s.
For me it’s common sense.
If you represent a country, you should at least have been born there. If not, you should have lived in that country for a minimum of five years, enough to have learned a little bit of the language and the local culture. Also, it would help to have a familiar-sounding last name.
And finally, in the case of beauty pageants, I think it’s very misleading to the rest of the world who might now think that all Filipinas look like a Wurtzbach or a Gray and will be shocked to find that the majority actually look a lot shorter, darker and well, Asian.
It’s only fair to give credit to the more than 50 million Filipino women who live in the archipelago. They are team Filipinas. They are Miss Philippines.