Quintana: World Cup would be “watershed” moment for Panama

MIAMI, Florida – It is a time of great excitement at present for the Panamanian Women’s National Team. In a little over a month, Las Canaleras will arrive to New Zealand with the quest of punching their ticket to the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup in Australia/New Zealand via the Inter-Confederation Playoffs.

Drawn into Group C, Panama will take on Papua New Guinea on February 19, and should they emerge victorious, they can qualify for this summer’s tournament with a win versus Paraguay or Chinese Taipei.

There is a lot to look forward to, and everyone inside the Panama team is counting down the days until the playoff opener.

“It is a time of great happiness and preparation, with a lot of focus on the details that we are trying to resurface after the Concacaf W Championship. We want to rise up as a team and what better opportunity than a playoff to reach the same objective that we had at the start. The road might be a bit longer to this World Cup, but the players are calm and clear that with the work we put in, we will meet that objective,” said Panama Head Coach Ignacio Quintana in an exclusive interview with Concacaf.com.

Currently, Panama are conducting a training camp in Colombia as part of their preparation for next month’s playoff. After previous camps in Ecuador to work on altitude training and then in Spain where they faced Venezuela and Scotland in a pair of friendlies, the camp in Colombia is being used to simulate next month’s schedule in New Zealand.

“This camp now in Colombia is more like what we will face in February, with two friendlies against local clubs, where we will work on what we hope will be two games and on the short time we have between games,” said Quintana.

While Quintana does not have his full squad for the camp, as some of the players are currently with their club sides in Europe, the Mexican coach does have all the locally-based players, plus those who play in either the United States or South America.

“The locally-based players are showing their level and that they want to belong to this national team. Of the 23 players, not all of them have to play abroad. The ones on the team are the ones who will have won their place and will work to best represent Panama,” said Quintana.

Panama will take on a Papua New Guinea side that is perhaps unfamiliar to many fans of women’s football, but Quintana knows that the champion of the Oceania Football Confederation’s 2022 Women’s Nations Cup will require Panama’s full attention.

“We have our minds squarely on Papua New Guinea. We’re also gathering information on Paraguay and Chinese Taipei, but our focus is on Papua New Guinea. They had a good qualifying campaign in Oceania. They emerged as champions in beating Fiji, which were considered the strongest team, so they have us on alert.

“We don’t have a lot of information on them, but we know they won’t be giving us anything. We are approaching that game with the same seriousness as any team we play against. As a coaching staff, we have more information after the friendlies they have recently played. We are analyzing all of the different possibilities in how we can form a game plan to win that game and then be able to look to the second game,” said Quintana.

In his tenure as Head Coach of Panama, Quintana marvels at how his squad has improved and developed in the last two years. The strength and resilience shown throughout the process has helped the Central American side become a team that can compete with the world’s best.

“I highlight the character of my players, the passion that they feel for football, the desire to excel and move forward the sport. I see it in the players, but also in the coaches and referees and everyone dedicated to women’s football in Panama. It reflects the passion that is seen every day and that has helped us create that identity within the team,” said Quintana.

Panama reached the Inter-Confederation Playoffs by virtue of a Third-Place finish in their group at the 2022 Concacaf W Championship in Monterrey. The Canaleras opened with a 3-0 loss to Costa Rica, but then went toe-to-toe with reigning Olympic Champions Canada before narrowly falling 1-0. Panama then closed the tournament with a 1-0 win over Trinidad and Tobago to qualify for the playoff.

With victories against Papua New Guinea and either Paraguay or Chinese Taipei, Panama would qualify for a first ever Senior Women’s World Cup. The significance of achieving such a feat is not lost on Quintana.

“It would be a watershed moment for this group, for those of us who have been working on this project for two years. We know that when we have that World Cup ticket, the parents of families are going to trust more and take their daughter to train in football and break that paradigm that sadly still exists a lot in Latin America that only men can play football. It would make a huge difference to reach the World Cup, and would round out everything that we have been doing and working on these last two years,” concluded Quintana.