And then came the brief seconds in the 28th minute of play. From right field, alert Filipino-Norwegian midfielder Sara Eggesvik lobs a cross, and dusky Filipino-American forward Sarina Bolden leaps as if she was climbing stairs, besting two New Zealand defenders, and bangs in a potent header……GOOOOOAAALLLLL!!!!!!!!!!
Then there were the brief seconds in the 93rd minute. Tall, hefty, yellow-clad Filipino-American goalkeeper Olivia McDaniel, exhibiting classy footwork, dives to the left lower corner, gloved fingertips incredibly extending, breaking a sure-footed volley….SAAAAAVVVVEE!!!!!!!
In football, we all patiently wait for those ecstatic seconds. Decisive emotional moments which football’s greatest rhapsodist, Uruguay’s Eduardo Galeano, put best: “Those brief seconds when the human becomes divine and the image so clear that it burns onto our retinas and is imprinted, forevermore.”
Soccer’s goddesses finally blessed the Philippines Women’s National Football Team with its incredible first-ever World Cup win Tuesday by defeating New Zealand.
Astonishingly, too, the Filipinas were the first debutants to win at the World Cup. In this expanded 2023 World Cup games, eight countries made their maiden appearance: the Philippines, Ireland, Zambia, Haiti, Vietnam, Portugal, Panama, and Morocco.
But then “soccer continues to be the art of the unforeseeable.”
When you least expect it, the impossible occurs. It was when the Filipinas, minnows in a field of 32 teams ruled by European and North American sharks, unexpectedly pulled off an amazing win under a winter-jacket New Zealand night and before a scornful hometown crowd deriding them as “usurpers of prohibited glory.”
But as the Filipinas held off challenge after challenge, enlightening us during the match that they’d discovered the silence beyond the din of catcalls and jeers, finally claiming victory for the one real desire they had for being on the World Cup stage.
And so it has come to pass. The women’s national football team convincingly inspired a nation in a sport where “Lilliputians can change speed and accelerate brusquely without falling because they aren’t built like skyscrapers.”
The Filipinas will undoubtedly leave a legacy that should propel forward women’s soccer in this basketball-crazed country.
“I think it’s really just gonna help with the growth of football in the Philippines, and not just in the Philippines but globally, too, because Filipinos are everywhere,” Bolden said, days before her celebrated goal.
The Filipinas face off with world No. 12 Norway this afternoon where anything is possible. But whatever today’s result, Australian coach Alen Stajcic’s charges have won the difficult battle to boost Filipino soccer.
Admittedly, skeptics of the racialist type have difficulty with noted historian Eric Hobsbawn’s soccer insight of “the imagined community of millions seems more real as a team of eleven named people.”
Particularly so since most of the 23 players of the Filipinas squad sport names culled from the vast Filipino diaspora of recent decades.
There is no denying the consequential Filipino diaspora. The Filipinas team is the explicit image of millions of Filipinos out there, found just about anywhere in the world.
Nonetheless, Filipino cosmopolitanism doesn’t much bother the team members.
“When we’re together, it’s not about where we grew up or where we live. Everyone knows that we share the same blood and we’re family,” says team captain Tahnai Annis, a Filipino-American.
She adds: “It doesn’t matter if you grew up in Manila or your family is in the States … (the) common goal is that we are playing for the country and for all the football players in the Philippines.”
Such a pronounced diversity of origins didn’t hinder the team from congealing into a formidable organic unity. In the last 20 months, the team played a whopping 39 games, bettering their Federation Internationale de Football Association world ranking, from 68th to 46th.
And now, in the echoes of Tuesday night’s euphoric herstory arc, the Filipinas team, as well as all of us Filipinos, can now dare dream of “crashing the party” in the forthcoming tougher Round of 16. That calls for hearty cheers. Brava! Brava!
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Email: nevqjr@yahoo.com.ph