16 nations give region’s women football a boost

The International Football Federation (FIFA) drew commitment from 16 countries to help sustain the growth of women’s football in the region in a FIFA women’s football seminar which came to a close the other day.

The Philippines is the first country from Southeast Asia to ever host the event through the Philippine Football Federation ( PFF). The regional workshop, which drew participants from Australia, Brunei, Cambodia, Guam, Indonesia, Laos, Macau, Malaysia, Maldives, Mongolia, Myanmar, Singapore, Thailand, Timor Leste and Vietnam, was held at the Discovery Suites in Ortigas Center.

Supervising the workshop were Urs Zanitti, FIFA head of development program; David Borja, Asia Oceania development manager, Tatjana Haenni, women’s football manager; and Cristy Ramos, women’s committee member.

The FIFA officials were joined by PFF vice presidents Tony Chua and Vincent Santos in a press briefing later.

The seminar was held with the main goal of sustaining the growth and development of women’s football in the region.

FIFA officials said Asia as a whole is doing well as proven by the all-Asia finals in last year’s world under-17 championship between Korea and China in Russia. The Koreans emerged champions.

But FIFA wants to improve competitiveness of Southeast Asia-Oceania countries to pave the way for balance competition in the whole region.

As for the Philippines, FIFA officials said the country has a more realistic chance of qualifying in women’s World Cup than in the men’s event.

"You have good women players. In fact, you have a player competing in Singapore and another one who has just been recruited to play in Europe. You’ve been exporting players abroad," said FIFA women’s football consultant Dato Yap Nyim Keong from Malaysia.

"We have football field in every open space in our country. We’ve been giving all the support to football but we have no players recruited to play in big tourneys abroad," Keong added.

Keong said Filipina booters have a good chance of winning the gold medal in the SEA Games in the absence of social and religious problems the other Southeast Asian women’s teams have to deal with.