by Moses Billacura
The football fever has started as the World Cup gets going on June 11 in South Africa.
Organizers have printed more tickets to accommodate additional spectators. The more tickets sold, the better for FIFA.
FIFA, the world’s governing body for the sport, has been very generous to Southeast Asian countries like the Philippines by supporting their programs. Just recently, the Philippine Football Federation (PFF) was able to build a multi-million office building.
FIFA also allocates funds from the earnings of the World Cup to rehabilitate football fields, build more playing fields for the kids, and appropriate funds for football education for administrators, coaches and players.
Football, unfortunately, is not a popular sport in Davao and in our country despite the fact that the Philippine Football Federation is the oldest National Sports Association. It was established in the early 1900s.
A Japanese coach visited the late Jose “Sensei” Te, Davao City’s top coach, at the PTA field in the 1990s and shared a little history about the Philippine teams defeating the Japanese teams before in Asian tournaments.
But the Japan Football Federation officials worked very hard to improve the sad state of their football and through the years have established the J-League, a professional football tournament.
And no Filipino team has since then defeated a Japanese squad for Japan has become a football power.
We have very good players, especially from Barotac Nuevo in Iloilo, Bacolod, Cebu in the Visayas as well as from Davao City, Cotabato, Compostela Valley, Davao del Norte, Zamboanga areas, but it surprises me that we are still a whipping boy in the Southeast Asian Games. The only team that we defeated was the one from Laos. We are not good enough for the Asian Games.
There are a lot of football talents in the Visayas and Mindanao waiting to be discovered.
The PFF should find a way to bring back the National Under-16 Tournament similar to the successful nationwide Coke Go-for-Goal program and do away with Seven-A-Side competitions or contests that involve only seven players per team.
A strict 11-A-Side format should be used because this will prepare players for the big tournaments. Big enough tournaments that will result one day in our seeing Filipinos playing not just in the SEA Games but especially in the Asian Games and the Asian Football Confederation-sanctioned competitions.
I hope that watching the upcoming World Cup games will inspire our football federation officials to do something and not just be awed by the spectacular plays.
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The spectacular performance by 12-year-old Nekki Fernandez-Forbes as Aladdin in the Aladdin Musical at the Truro Junior High School made me very proud as a Filipino. She reminded me of our international superstar, Lea Salonga. Nekki is the daughter of Nellen Fernandez-Forbes of Cebu and Mike Forbes of Truro, who cooks the best chicken barbeque.
Congratulations!
