HISOR, Tajikistan – The Philippines secured its place in the next round of AFC Women’s Olympic Qualifying Tournament after a dominant 4-0 victory over Hong Kong last Tuesday at Hisor Central Stadium here.
Sarina Bolden grabbed a brace, while Meryll Serrano and Quinley Quezada were also on the scoresheet as the Filipinas swept Group E without conceding a goal.
The Filipinas, also preparing for the FIFA Women’s World Cup in July, also beat Pakistan, 4-0, and Tajikistan, 8-0, in their first two matches.
Qualification meant the Filipinas advanced to the final group stage of Olympic qualifying for the first time. They will join the five seeded teams in the second round and the six other teams that qualified. The 12 teams will be drawn into three groups of four with the top teams in the group advancing to the third round along with the best second placed team.
Coach Alen Stajcic was delighted over his team’s performance, although he felt the Filipinas could have scored more had they been sharper inside the penalty box.
“I thought we played well, we controlled the game well, probably our best control we’ve had this week here against a good opposition, an opposition 15 months ago we beat only 2-1 in the last minute,” said the Australian, who was coaching the 100th international match of his career that included 36 with the Philippines and 64 with Australia.
“It just shows how much we’ve improved. A large part of the game was pretty good, but our finishing has to be better if we want to compete with the big nations in Asia. We’ve improved a lot but there’s still a lot of hard work to do.”
The first goal came just five minutes into the match as Bolden finished coolly after a fine run from the half-line where she received the ball from strike partner Katrina Guillou.
Bolden got her second four minutes from halftime with another quality finish. Sara Eggesvik’s lofted ball found Bolden who found the top corner to make it 2-nil.
Serrano scored the third with a knuckleball free kick from 30 yards out in the 44th minute, before Quezda scored the fourth eight minutes after the restart.
“We know we’re coming up against big nations now in the next round, Australia, Japan, China and the two Koreas plus Thailand and Vietnam,” said Stajcic. “It’s going to be very difficult for us and we need to be ready.
