Alen Stajcic is returning to Philippine football in a surprising new role, three years after leading the country on their historic journey to the FIFA Women\u2019s World Cup.<\/p>\n
The Australian head coach has been appointed to take charge of the Philippines Under-17 women\u2019s team for next month\u2019s AFC U17 Women\u2019s Asian Cup qualifiers in Uzbekistan.<\/p>\n
Stajcic will lead the U17s against hosts Uzbekistan and Bangladesh in qualifying, with the group winner advancing to the 2027 AFC U17 Women\u2019s Asian Cup in China.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe has come to help us. His heart has always been for us,\u201d U17 team manager Selu Lozano said.<\/p>\n
It marks a return to familiar territory for former Matildas boss Stajcic, who transformed the senior Filipinas after taking charge in 2021.<\/p>\n
He guided the Philippines to their first Women\u2019s World Cup qualification before overseeing their tournament debut in Australia and New Zealand in 2023, where they recorded a famous 1-0 victory over co-host the Football Ferns.<\/p>\n
Stajcic departed following the World Cup and eventually returned to the A-Leagues, most recently coaching Western Sydney Wanderers last season before leaving the club in January amid their forgettable 2025-26 campaign.<\/p>\n
Now the ex-Perth Glory coach is back in the Philippines setup, this time helping develop their next generation.<\/p>\n
There remains a strong Australian connection across the Philippines women\u2019s program, with Stajcic\u2019s countryman and successor Mark Torcaso currently in charge of the senior national team.<\/p>\n
Torcaso is the longest serving Filipinas head coach and he has already secured their place at the 2027 Women\u2019s World Cup in Brazil.<\/p>\n
The highly-rated Aussie, who has unearthed the most debutants and young players into the senior squad, has also delivered an historic SEA Games gold medal.<\/p>\n
On Torcaso\u2019s watch, the Philippines have reached their highest ever FIFA ranking to go with the country\u2019s best performance at the Asian Games \u2013 two quarter-finals.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Alen Stajcic is returning to Philippine football in a surprising new role, three years after leading the country…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":909358,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[179654,64,63,596,251063,277,85],"class_list":["post-909357","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-alen-stajcic","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-football","tag-mark-torcaso","tag-philippines","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/909357","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=909357"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/909357\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/909358"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=909357"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=909357"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=909357"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}