My variation of the named captures theme:

#! perl -slw
use strict;

my $pat1 = "field";
my $pat2 = "f.i.e.l.d";
my $pat3 = "the";
my $str = "There are many soccer fields in England - f1i2e3l4d";

while( $str =~ m/((?'A'$pat1)|(?'B'$pat2)|(?'C'$pat3))/ig ){
    printf "Found '$1' from pattern '%s'\n",
        grep{ defined $-{ $_ }[ 0 ]; } keys %-;
}

__END__
C:\test>junk
Found 'The' from pattern 'C'
Found 'field' from pattern 'A'
Found 'f1i2e3l4d' from pattern 'B'
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