The Philippines national football team has recently been suffering surprising and disappointing defeats and this is especially evident by their results during the 2016 AFF Championship where they lost against Thailand on November 25 of 2016 and sustained successive draws with Singapore and Indonesia in that same month.
After such an underwhelming string of results, the head coach of the Philippines national side Thomas Dooley has managed to bounce back and push his team to a remarkable 4-1 triumph over Nepal in their 1st 2019 AFC Asian Cup qualification match which was played on March 28.
This victory puts Philippines at the top of group F with 3 points secured from 1 match which is the same amount of points as Yemen but their goal difference is slightly worse.
“I’m happy that we got the three points. That’s what we wanted. I’m very happy that the team played the ball nicely with some good combinations. Of course, our performance prior like in the Suzuki Cup sticks on our minds but we just have to move on. We do not pay much attention to it anymore and are counting the ones that we have now here in the Asian Cup qualifiers. We are going to work harder so as to advance to the next round,” Thomas Dooley said as he talked about the victory of his national side over Nepal.
This is the 1st qualification match of Philippines and the best way that they could’ve initiated their journey of advancing into the 2019 AFC Asian Cup. The 2nd qualification match of Philippines is scheduled to take place on June 13 as the team of Thomas Dooley faces off with Tajikistan.