THE Philippines put up a gallant stand before absorbing a stinging 0-1 loss to Wales yesterday at the start of the four-nation Pinatar Cup at the Pinatar Arena in San Pedro del Pinatar, Spain.
Goalie Olivia McDaniel had her hands full against the vaunted Welsh, who at No. 32 are ranked 21 rungs higher than the Filipinas in the FIFA women’s world ratings.
McDaniel surrendered a penalty to striker Kayleigh Green near the end of the first half for the thrilling match’s only goal. Welsh defender Rhiannon Roberts was taken down in the penalty area by defender Dominique Randle, with Green coolly converting the penalty kick.
Competing in bone-chilling conditions, the Filipinas will take a two-day rest before facing Scotland, which lost to Iceland 0-2 in the other match, tomorrow afternoon.
“We don’t like losing and we’ve spoken about that before but I’m really pleased with what we did tonight,” coach Alen Stajcic said after the match. “There were usual issues of not being able to keep the ball better, which is something we have to work on.
“It’s the fourth or fifth penalty we’ve given away, a penalty, and we’ve got to learn on those kinds of things but apart from that I thought we did really well,” he said.
“Dom (Randle) herself had a strong game defensively. Overall, I think we need to work on that other part of the game which is still lacking at the moment,” the Aussie tactician added.
He acknowledged that the wards of Welsh coach Gemma Grainger dominated possession, actually close to 80 percent, based on the statistics of the game, on top of getting 12 shots to the Filipinas’ solitary attempt.
That came early in the second half when skipper Tahnai Annis set up striker Katrina Guillou, whose shot went straight into the hands of debuting goalkeeper Safia Middleton-Patel.
Stajcic traced the early challenges of his players to jet lag and the fact that some of them arrived in the small Spanish town overlooking the Mediterranean Sea just a few days before the tournament.
“For us to be in pre-season and the opposition right in the middle of their season, the jetlag, we’ve had delayed flights, we’ve had players ill and we’ve had players coming in really late to camp, that was an amazing effort — probably one of our best in terms of effort,” Stajcic noted.
“We went up against players in the (women’s) super league and some of the big clubs as well so it was a really good effort and the team showed a lot of discipline defensively.”
