Football

The recent success of the Philippine football team, fondly called Azkals (asong kalye or mongrels), have sparked interest in the sport. It is supposed to be the most popular sport in the world and yet in the Philippines it is far behind basketball despite the latter giving not so encouraging results in major competitions notwithstanding our sending teams comprised of professional players. Perhaps we now have the opportunity to promote football to the level that our neighbors have embraced the sport and focus on the development of players to come up with competitive teams at present and in the future.

I've played football or, as we call it here, soccer since I learned the sport in Physical Education (PE) classes in grade school. At my school, the academic year was divided into quarters and each quarter, our PE focused on a particular sport. From grade school to high school the basic sports that we rotated among each quarter were basketball, volleyball, football and swimming. These were graded according to our knowledge of the rules (theoretical) and our performance (practical). I did quite well in all considering that I was usually playing with other kids who were more my level. The good ones played their own games and were usually the ones who got more attention from the coaches who were also trying to spot potential players for the varsity. Of course, our classes usually had core teams for the intramurals.

In 1999, I was still in Japan and had just recently successfully defended my dissertation behind closed doors in front of a panel of five that included 3 senior professors at my university. At the time, the eliminations were being held for the 2000 Sydney Olympics and the group matches were hosted by Hongkong. The group included the Philippines and heavy favorite Japan, who along with South Korea had the best teams in Asia thanks to their local leagues and the emergence of several excellent players competing in Europe particularly in the English Premier League and Italy's Serie A. As usual, the football fans among my labmates tuned in to the live game and I joined them joking that Japan would surely beat the Philippine team considering the recent performance and Japan's campaign to host the next World Cup in 2002. The outcome was never in doubt and below is a link from YouTube showing how bad we were back then. I must admit I wasn't at all embarrassed knowing in advance how we would be performing. My labmates and I just laughed it off like a comedy show.





In the recent AFF Suzuki Cup, the Azkals finally showed their new found mettle and despite bowing out to favored Indonesia in the semi-finals, clearly surprised her Southeast Asian neighbors with their performance. It was a clear message that we would no longer be the whipping boys in this part of the world. The performance also showed our potential to improve more and perhaps become a decent enough team to compete for a spot in the World Cup Final. Partida pa nga as they say considering that this team received no support at all from the Philippine Football Federation, something that's about to change with FIFA's orders for an audit on the PFF's operations that was heavily subsidized by FIFA to the tune of 250,000 USD per year. Reports mention that since 2010 was a World Cup year, the assistance would actually total 500,000 USD for the development of football in this country. One can only hope that the money will be spent wisely in the near future and that the team, shown below against defending AFF champion Vietnam, would eventually establish itself as an Asian power in the sport.



I will look forward to a 2011 where Philippine football will have a most productive campaign. who knows? We might also just get the stadium needed to allow us to host football matches and cheer our own team as passionately as in other countries.