THE OTHER NATIONAL TEAM · PANAMA
During the men’s World Cup, FemGol will trace the history of some of the women’s national teams from the countries taking to the pitch. Because a country’s football doesn’t fit in a single team.
Panama arrive tonight against England with no hope of continuing in the men’s World Cup, but with something still unfinished: earning the first point in their tournament history.
They lost 1-0 to Ghana. They lost 1-0 again to Croatia. Two narrow defeats that count for exactly the same as the heavy losses in their 2018 debut, though they say something different. Panama still have no points, but they no longer look like guests who have only just worked out where they are.
On the other side of the same badge is a team that knows well what it means to get close without quite arriving.
The women’s side spent years building itself up, disappearing and starting again. They came within a penalty shootout of their first World Cup, fell in a play-off and had to wait five years to find the same door again.
When they finally walked through it, the goal was scored by one of the players who had missed that penalty.
Before there was a team
Panamanian women’s football was not born from a federation, a stable league or a development plan. It was born every time a group of women found somewhere to play.
Between 1939 and 1941, matches were already being organised between Catholic schools. In 1950, a visit from a Costa Rican women’s side drew around 20,000 people to the Estadio Nacional and helped give rise to Deportivo Ancón, considered one of the country’s first women’s clubs.
Then came competitions in Colón, Chiriquí and Veraguas; the sides from El Chorrillo, Barraza and Panamá Viejo through the 1970s; and a women’s league that ran from 1976 to 1980. Every attempt seemed to confirm that there were enough players. None managed to build something that lasted.
Things started moving again in 1996, when the Liga Superior de Fútbol Femenino was founded. Venus de Santa Ana won the first edition in 1997 and the competition survived until 2002. It was then replaced by ANAFUFE, another tournament that kept the game alive for a decade before it too disappeared.
Panama did not build a straight line. It built a succession of starting points.
A winning debut
The senior national side was officially established in 2002.
Their first international match ended in a 2-1 win over Guatemala and, just a few months later, Panama took part in their first Concacaf Women’s Championship. There they earned another victory that hinted at what they might become: a 4-2 defeat of Trinidad and Tobago, with three goals from Amarelis De Mera and one from Maritzenia Bedoya.
It was not enough to place the team among the region’s leading sides. The United States and Canada were on a different level, Mexico occupied the space just below them, and countries such as Costa Rica and Trinidad and Tobago had more established structures.
Panama moved forward in bursts. They played, disappeared from the calendar and tried again.
Until 2018.
A 17-year-old goalkeeper and a door left ajar
Panama arrived at the 2018 Concacaf Championship without being among the favourites.
They opened with a 3-0 win over Trinidad and Tobago, lost 5-0 to the United States and then played Mexico for a place in the semi-finals. They won 2-0.
In goal was Yenith Bailey, a 17-year-old who would end up receiving the tournament’s Golden Glove. Her saves kept alive a side that finished one match away from direct qualification for the World Cup in France.
Canada did not let them compete in the semi-final, winning 7-0. But Panama still had another chance. The third-place match against Jamaica sent the winner directly to the World Cup.
Jamaica took the lead. Natalia Mills equalised in the 75th minute. Jamaica scored again in extra time and Lineth Cedeño responded in the 115th.
Panama had levelled twice. After 120 minutes, everything came down to five steps from the penalty spot.
Jamaica won the shootout 4-2. Their goalkeeper, Nicole McClure, saved the kicks from Kenia Rangel and Lineth Cedeño.
Panama still had one last play-off against Argentina. They lost 4-0 in Sarandí and drew 1-1 in the second leg.
They had reached the door of the World Cup twice, and twice they had been left outside.
Back to the same place
Five years later, Panama had to travel almost exactly the same road.
The side finished third in their group at the 2022 Concacaf Championship and secured a place in the intercontinental play-off held in New Zealand. They no longer had to win a two-legged tie, but they needed to win two matches away from home.
First they beat Papua New Guinea 2-0.
Then they faced Paraguay.
The match was goalless when Marta Cox received the ball on the right flank and sent a cross into the area. Lineth Cedeño arrived between the central defenders and headed home.
75th minute. Panama 1, Paraguay 0.
The player whose penalty Jamaica had saved in 2018 had just scored the goal that sent Panama to their first ever women’s World Cup.
She had not erased that missed kick. She had come back and found another way to finish the move.
The minute the World Cup changed colour
Panama made their debut at Australia and New Zealand 2023 with a 4-0 defeat to Brazil. They then lost 1-0 to Jamaica.
They arrived for their final match, against France, already eliminated and still without a World Cup goal.
Before going out onto the pitch, Marta Cox walked over to head coach Nacho Quintana and told him they were going to make history.
It took her just over a minute to deliver.
Cox was fouled more than thirty metres from goal and struck the free kick past Pauline Peyraud-Magnin. The ball hit the top corner and became Panama’s first goal at a women’s World Cup.
France won 6-3. Yomira Pinzón, from the penalty spot, and Lineth Cedeño scored Panama’s other two. The side went home without a point, but no longer without a goal.
The tournament did not immediately change the conditions for women’s football in the country. Quintana continued calling for greater investment, better infrastructure and more professionalisation. But the players began to be recognised on the street, and girls started appearing in shirts with their names on the back.
Panama had learned that qualifying for a World Cup did not solve all their problems. They had also learned that it changed the size of what they could imagine.
Another door — Canada this time
Since October 2024, the side has been managed by the Spaniard Toña Is —whose career and perspective on the barriers women face in coaching we recently analysed in FemGol—, who coached the Spain Under-17 team that won the World Cup in 2018.
Before taking charge of her first official match with Panama, Toña Is had managed eleven friendlies, with seven wins, two draws and two defeats. Among those results were three consecutive victories over Costa Rica and a 1-0 win in Australia — the first in Panama’s history against the Matildas.
In qualifying for the Concacaf W Championship, Panama won all four of their matches: 6-1 against Curaçao, 3-0 against Saint Kitts and Nevis, 3-1 against Aruba and 3-0 against Cuba.
Fifteen goals scored. Two conceded. Twelve points from twelve.
On 28 November they will face Canada in the Concacaf W Championship quarter-finals. The tie will be played in Texas, and the winner earns a direct place at the 2027 World Cup in Brazil.
Defeat would not mean immediate elimination. The four sides that lose in the quarter-finals will move into a play-in round. If Panama lose to Canada, they will face the loser of Mexico–Haiti for a place in the intercontinental play-off.
The road looks more like 2018 than it might have seemed.
Back then, Canada shut the first door with a 7-0. Then came Jamaica, a penalty shootout and a play-off against Argentina. Panama had three chances and could not get through any of them.
Now they will face Canada first again. Win, and they go straight to the World Cup. Lose, and they will have to find the long way around once more.
Tonight, the men’s side will look for the first point in their World Cup history against England. In November, the women will begin their bid to return to the World Cup.
Both wear the same badge, but the women learned first that getting close does not guarantee arriving. They also learned something else: that a closed door is not always the last one.
Lineth Cedeño knows that better than anyone. In 2018, a goalkeeper stopped her penalty. In 2023, her header took a whole country to the World Cup.
She did not erase the first attempt. She came back and found another way to finish it.
Panama play too.
