Younghusbands’ return to Azkals hits another snag

The return of the Younghusbands to the Azkals will be re-set to a later date as the brothers could not make it to their original Tuesday flight schedule forcing the Philippine Football Federation to keep them out of the friendly against Bahrain tomorrow.
With their flight re-scheduled to Friday, Phil and James Younghusband will play in Loyola Meralco Sparks’ opening match in the United Football League Cup against Laos FC today at the University of Makati football field.
“The Younghusband brothers were given a call up but their management intimated that they have a previous commitment that they could not cancel making them unavailable to fly out Tuesday as the coaching staff requested,” PFF communications head Ebong Joson told philstar.com in a text message.
The brothers tried to negotiate to leave Wednesday night but the PFF deemed it too close to the match against Bahrain.
“With all these, the Azkals coaching staff and management decided that it is best if they join the squad in Kuwait so that they have time to recuperate,” Joson added.
The Azkals will face Kuwait national team on Oct. 16.
Most of the Azkals left for Bahrain last Sunday for their 10-day Middle East training camp which included two friendlies against Bahrain and Kuwait. A scrimmage against Bahrain’s under-23 team using the roster that won the Peace Cup title was scrapped from the original schedule due to the unavailability of the host’s junior squad.
“Unfortunately, Bahrain’s Under-23 has to schedule something else and declined the invitation. I would have wanted to field our Peace Cup team against Bahrain’s under-23 just to check their level of play,” said Azkals team manager Dan Palami last weekend before the team left. “We’ll try to arrange a scrimmage against the commercial clubs there.”
The Younghusband brothers alongside Ref Cuaresma and Anto Gonzales were not able to join the team right away due to Loyola’s semifinal stint in the Singapore Cup. Cuaresma and Gonzales, however, took the Tuesday flight to Bahrain leaving the Younghusband brothers and Demitrius Omphroy out of the lineup tomorrow.
Omphroy was only discharged from the hospital last Tuesday after suffering from flu and diarrhea. He will fly straight to Kuwait and join the squad there.  Fil-Danish Jerry Lucena, meanwhile, is already with the squad in Bahrain.