WITH Australian mentor Mark Torcaso still calling the shots, the Filipinas, the national women’s football team, will have weeklong tryouts for local players for future international play starting this Saturday at the Rizal Memorial Stadium.
“The main objective of the coming camp is for the coaching staff to build our local player pool and to provide them the opportunity to be seen and assessed by the coaching staff,” Philippine Senior National Teams director Freddy Gonzalez said in a statement.
“This is very important, as we need our locally based players to be aware of the game model we are building for the Philippine women’s national football team. In case any of them are called up, they will be ready to perform,” Gonzalez added.
“We have a lot of talented local players who are capable of playing for the national team.
The gap between the locally-based and those playing abroad primarily lies in the difference in strength and conditioning,” said Torcaso, who took over a year ago from compatriot Alen Stajcic.
To address this aspect, Gonzalez said the PFF has hired two highly recommended physical conditioning coaches: Riedoh Berdien of South Africa and Filipino Aris Andrey.
“They (Bierden and Andrey) will implement programs for our locally based players so that they will be up to par with the fitness of their overseas-based counterparts. Riedoh will be handling the overall programs of the men’s and women’s teams.
“Aris will be implementing and monitoring the progress of all the local-based players.”
