Philippine Azkals captain and goalkeeper Neil Etheridge has urged the younger players to step up after splitting their assignments in their back-to-back friendly matches against the visiting Nepal and Chinese Taipei under their returning coach Michael Weiss.

The Filipinos welcomed back Weiss with a hard-earned 1-nil win over Nepal last week before disappointingly conceding a late goal to Chinese Taipei four days later to absorb a 3-2 loss.

“We’re in the transition period, I think it’s clear to see. My honest assessment is, he’s (Weiss) brought in some more senior players. And I feel that they’ve helped. So we, as senior players, need to help the younger generation,” said Etheridge.

“But saying that, I feel like I was the younger generation many years ago. I feel like the younger players need to step up to the play as well. Regardless of the age, everyone needs to play their part,” he added.

The Azkals actually took a 2-1 halftime lead and remained aggressive in the offensive end before ultimately running out of defensive schemes to turn back the Chinese surge.

Etheridge didn’t see action for the Philippines in its match against Nepal and was replaced by Patrick Deyto, who kept a clean sheet in his return.

The 33-year-old flew back to England for his club duties for Birmingham City the day after the loss and but remains hopeful that the team would show more significant progress heading into their camp in September for the FIFA World Cup/AFC Asian Cup joint qualifiers.

“Like I said, slightly disappointed to have conceded two goals in the way we did at the dying moments of the game, to kind of leave us empty-handed with nothing. But speaking to coach after the game, we’re taking the positives moving forward to the camp in September. But it would have been very nice to have two games, two wins in Manila,” he concluded.