PHNOM PENH—The Philippines beat Vietnam, 2-1, at the end of pool play on Tuesday night but the Southeast Asian Games experience would augur well enough for the Filipinas preparations for the FIFA Women’s World Cup in July.
“This has no effect in our preparations [for World Cup],” the Filipinas’ Australian coach Alen Stajcic said. “It’s just another group of matches in an experienced group.”
Stajcic said the Filipinas failure to the advance to the semifinals—where they could have matched their bronze-medal finish or surpass it with either a first-ever gold or silver—hardly hardly their preparations for the World Cup in Australia.
The heroic of the team’s top-scorer Sarina Bolden and Halli Long went for naught after Myanmar repulsed Malaysia with a 5-1 rout.
The Philippines and Myanmar wound up with 2-0-1 win-draw-loss records but Myanmar advanced alongside Vietnam a better goal difference.
The other two semifinalists are Cambodia and Thailand.
On hindsight, Stajcic said the team should have been more aggressive at the start of the game to ramp up the possibility of securing more goals.
“We tried to waste the clock in the first minutes of the game to show that we have a positive attitude,” said Stajcic, who, however still praised his team for the win.
“Yes, we had our best performance in the tournament. And we saved it for our toughest opponent,” added Stajcic as the Philippines handed Vietnam a second straight defeat following the Filipinas’ 4-0 rout in the AFF Women’s Championships.