🇵🇦🏆 Riley Tanner is moving to her own beat ahead of Panama's World Cup debut
The Michigan-born forward hopes to give Panama fans a reason to keep on dancing and celebrating.
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There will be music and dancing. That’s one thing Riley Tanner can count on.
On Monday, when the Panama women’s national team arrives at Hindmarsh Stadium, in Adelaide, Australia, to make its FIFA World Cup debut, the 23-year-old knows there will be music and dancing.
How is she so certain? Because wherever Panama goes, sound and movement follow. At practices, in the locker room, on the team bus, in the team hotel and in players’ hotel rooms. Everywhere. That’s just how they roll.
On the pitch and off the pitch, it’s a major part of their identity. One teammate has even curated a four-hour playlist which helps keep the team moving at all times.
“Culture-wise, it's all about the music and dancing,” Tanner told me in a video call from Saudi Arabia two weeks before Panama’s date with Brazil in the opening match of Group F. “It’s nothing too crazy, but just wherever we go, there will always be someone carrying around a boombox always listening to Latin music.
“It's always fun. They always have good attitudes. It's very easy to get on [with everyone]. The team is very accepting. You just gotta kind of insert yourself and they'll pull you in.”
With a grin on her face, the forward told a story about how the previous night some of the Panamanian players had pulled in a few of their Saudi hosts, persuading them to join in on the dancing.
Tanner knows that feeling of being “pulled in” by this squad.
On her very first call-up with Panama, Tanner’s teammates quickly nicknamed her ‘Frozen’ because of her blonde hair and braid.
It wasn’t long before the entire locker room was encouraging her to break out a rendition of ‘Let It Go’ or sometimes the Spanish-language version ‘Libre Soy’. There are a few teamamtes who she’s not convinced actually know her real name.
“Every time I play. They're like, ‘You look like ‘Frozen’’. Or ‘you look like ‘Elsa’’. So then they just called me ‘Frozen’...we go back and forth with the words. They make me sing it all the time,” Tanner said with a chuckle. “It definitely made me feel a part of the team.
"And it's funny, but at the same time, they do it because they care. They care about me.”
Tanner, who was born and raised in Michigan, qualifies for Panama through her mother, Beatriz Rintala, and her grandmother, who shares the same name.
The younger Beatriz spent the first 30 years of her life in Panama before moving to the United States and starting her own family around the turn of the millennium.
Tanner was sullen when she told me that she is still yet to visit Panama, with a trip booked in 2020 eventually was canceled because of the COVID-19 pandemic. So far, all the national team camps she’s attended have been outside the country. She hopes that will change soon.
Before joining the national team in 2023, many of Tanner’s brushes with her Panamanian heritage came from her grandmother, who still lives next door to her parents.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, food has played a huge role in passing on Panamanian culture from grandmother to granddaughter.
Tanner says that almost every night growing up she would pop over for dinner at her grandmother’s house. She would love to hear stories of the old country and eat ensalada de papa, a traditional Panamanian potato salad dish.
Hefty plates of rice and beans are an absolute must at Grandma Rintala’s house. The secret to the recipe - that Tanner assures me isn’t written down anywhere - is making sure you cook the bones into a broth and mix it with the rice, beans, tomatoes, peppers, and onions.
While Panama has been in her blood since she was born, it wasn’t until 2022, that Tanner made a call to the Panama federation to register on their radar. Tanner was entering her fifth year at the University of Alabama and felt she could be of use on head coach Ignacio “Nacho” Quintana’s squad.
“I explained my situation of how I could play for them and asked if they’d consider me,” Tanner said. “Then, coach Nacho watched film of my games and we started the process at the beginning of October 2022.
“But by then ‘Bama was having a really good season, and since it was my last college season, I wanted to finish that before starting this, so I did not join Panama until after I graduated.”
At the same time, Quintana was preparing for the two biggest matches of his life as Panama was gearing up to play in the Women's World Cup Qualification Intercontinental Play-off in New Zealand in February 2023.
Having wrapped up her SEC-winning season in Tuscaloosa that November, Tanner was invited into her first Panama camp in January 2023. Her eventual international debut, though, would come with a place at the World Cup on the line in New Zealand that February.
The talismanic Marta Cox gave Panama a 1-0 first half lead against Papua New Guinea thanks to an acrobatic volley in the box. At halftime, Quintana spoke to Tanner and told her she would be coming on during the break. “Go and seal the win,” she remembers him telling her.
Seventeen minutes later, in her first-ever appearance for Panama, Tanner picked up the ball on the edge of the attacking third and surveyed her options.
After shrugging off her initial marker, 'Frozen' carried the ball into the box, evaded three more defenders, and then side-footed the ball past the oncoming goalkeeper from 10 yards out. A certified golazo to certify the victory.
“That was definitely something really special. Just to get on the field, then let alone to score a goal in my first game. Yeah, that was definitely something special,” smiled Tanner, wistfully remembering that moment.
The final playoff match against Paraguay ended up being an even tighter affair. Deadlocked at 0-0 until the 75th minute, Lineth Cedeño scored Panama’s winning goal with the team's only shot on target of the match.
In the Paraguay box, Tanner was standing just a few yards behind her teammate when she headed in a free kick. No one on the planet had a better view of that historic goal or Cedeño’s celebration, as she peeled off her shirt, then tossed it away , earning every bit of the yellow card.
“As soon as it left her head, I was like: ‘Yep, I've seen goals like this before, and that's going in.’ That was awesome, and I was juiced, especially with how she celebrated. I wasn't expecting that. I was like, Oh snap, here we go,” Tanner said.
With a place at the 2023 World Cup clinched, the Panama team danced, celebrated, and rejoiced harder than they ever had before that night in Hamilton, New Zealand.
“All night, we were just going all night,” she said. “It’s something I'll always remember.”
Now the focus is on the tournament itself. After the camp in Saudi Arabia, Panama headed to Japan for a friendly, losing 5-0, and finally touched down in Australia just over a week before the debut against Brazil.
That warm-up match in Japan was the last of five that the Panamanian soccer federation organized for the team to get ready for the 2023 World Cup.
The squad has been preparing in a lengthy multi-continental camp that began in Panama in mid-June. Tanner joined two weeks late because of her NWSL responsibilities with the Washington Spirit.
When Tanner did eventually link up with the rest of the Panama squad, it was 48 hours before a friendly away to Spain.
Panama suffered a heavy 7-0 defeat in that match, with the former Alabama forward coming off the bench with 30 minutes left to play and with the scoreline already at 6-0.
But the importance of the match for the Panama players goes way beyond the result. Tanner stressed that the young team “definitely learned a lot” from facing off against one of the best squads in the world.
She also emphasized how the film from that game would be invaluable moving forward. At the very least, she was thrilled to be on the field with her Panama teammates once again and to get “her legs moving.”
Any participant in a competition has some chance of winning, at least if this writer’s math is correct, even if that chance is incredibly small.
Yet, according to Opta, Panama has a 0% chance of winning the 2023 World Cup and just a 2.25% chance of making it out of the group stage. Along with the Philippines, that makes the Central Americans statistically the biggest underdogs at this year's World Cup.
Tanner isn’t outlandish when asked about Panama’s expectations in the tournament. She doesn't give away any clear targets or objectives. More than anything she says that Panama is there to “compete” and that she hopes the results follow.
She's not concerned about what experts might be saying about the team either. The forward was adamant that the team would be “as prepared as possible” to try to pull some upsets Group F.
After all, this Panama team moves to its own beat. And always will.
Whether it moves on from the first stage or not, this team will forever be remembered as the first to ever take the pitch at a women’s World Cup. They are history makers.
"For my family, this is just something really, really special. I'm just super super grateful [to play at a World Cup]. Seeing the nation have our backs through everything that we do, it's something really cool to be a part of."
Panama will play Brazil in their 2023 World Cup group stage opener at 7:00am ET on Monday, July, 24. Watch the match on FS1/Telemundo/Peacock.
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I love this article a lot. It helps that Tanner’s story is great, but the choice to tell so much of it is awesome. I’m especially intrigued that she contacted Panama -- it’s usually the other way around, federations (or, as reported here in another edition, freelance scouts) hunting down eligible players. I feel like that says something about the women’s team being under-resourced compared to the men’s (surprise!) but also something about Tanner’s desire to act off the field to win.
What a great article. I would love one on the Philippines and their American connections.