Shining under the bright lights in front of an international audience is nothing new for this Puerto Rico star. It’s been happening for years, but it seems lately things have risen to a new level.
Bad Bunny? Well, yes, he’s having a very good year, but in this case, it is his compatriot, Jill Aguilera, who is setting the world alight with her football. In three wins to start Concacaf qualifying for the FIFA Women’s World Cup 2027™, the Puerto Rico and Carolina Ascent player has amassed nine goals, making her the confederation’s joint-top scorer with Mexico’s Charlyn Corral.
A showdown between the two is set for 18 April to likely determine whether Puerto Rico or Mexico progress to the Concacaf W Championship, the region’s qualifying tournament for the global finals. Aguilera feels like Puerto Rico’s time has come, and they would like nothing more than the superstar rapper and singer to join them on a World Cup journey.
Jill Aguilera: I think it’s good. Overall, we take it game by game. I would say we’re a disciplined group when it comes to staying grounded, knowing that we need to have a good goal differential, but also tidying up things and seeing partnerships develop for future games with more difficult opponents.
No… my very first camp with Puerto Rico was in 2022, which was for 2023 qualifying. We unfortunately did not make it, but I think we’ve been growing so much as a federation and seeing a lot more girls. I feel like the scouting department has probably had an easier time than in the past in getting players to want to come and play. Overall, I’m just trying to prepare myself and the team to make more history.
There’s been more competition, position by position, player by player. We’re getting a lot more experienced players that are playing all over the world. Our standard as a federation, not just as players but within the staff, operations, marketing, photography, everything, has been driven up a lot in the past couple of years.
Our biggest showcase was the W Gold Cup in 2024. I don’t think anybody thought we were going to make it into the group stage and do as well as we did. That just goes to show who we are as a federation and as players. We’re fine being the underdogs.
It definitely built our confidence. Some of the games that we’ve had, we’ve shown a lot of promise and I think we finally were able to be on a stage where we showed what we’re about. There’s no flashiness, no divas, no ego. It’s all, ‘We are here to represent the island and make the people of Puerto Rico proud’.
Over the past three years we’ve played Mexico probably more than any other country, and our results against them continue to get better. Last time we played in the Azteca, we shocked them when we scored and were up for a lot of the game. I think that just goes to show that we’re ready and we’re prepared. I think that Mexico is going to have to do more than what they’ve had to do in the past in order to beat us.
I don’t really have words. There are some girls who probably thought that they wouldn’t be able to fulfill this dream of theirs, but now we’re at a point where that opportunity is really presenting itself. We have an amazing opportunity and regardless of whether we make the World Cup or not, we have so much to be proud of.
In December, when we had camp, Rauw Alejandro sponsored us. We went to his concert and he came to our game and that was crazy. Before I went to this camp a lot of my [club] team-mates asked, ‘Is Bad Bunny going be in your locker room this camp? Are you going to meet him? Can you get a picture? Can you get an autograph?’ I’m pretty sure he’s busy on tour, but I would imagine that if we made it to the World Cup, either he would be there or we would have some sort of opportunity to meet with him, which would be absolutely insane and really cool.
It’s been really great. We have a really great group of girls that are willing to put their head down, do the hard work and want to improve. With any sport, it has its ups and downs. All my life I was playing forward and now I play left-back, but this is what I do for the team. I try to get higher [up the pitch] as much as I can and score goals if possible. Overall, this is probably one of the best team cultures that I’ve had as a professional, so I’m really grateful for all the girls that I get to play with.
I met her when we were in camp together and we get to play on the same club. It’s a little difficult in terms of chemistry because she’s a goalkeeper, but I think we know each other well enough to be able to anticipate each other’s movements, so it definitely helps us for club and country for sure.
Photos courtesy of Concacaf and Carolina Ascent FC.
