Lessons from the Azkals

These past few months we have been witnesses to the stunningly spectacular rise of soccer or association football as an alternative to the Filipino obsession with basketball. (But, no, we’re not seeing this obsession die down any time soon, of course!)

I remember my high school days in Pagadian when I was  part of this small fraternity of sorts that would sponsor a football league every summer, with some support from a city councilor. There was as usual the annual summer basketball championships, which had all the money and all the sponsorships and fans from the private sector. We had none of that, of course, except for Milo and Coca-Cola which gave us drinks and some cash to pay for the linesmen and the referee and a few friends and relatives of players watching the weeklong event.

Thankfully, we had this large central school right next to the city plaza complete with a covered basketball court, high grandstand bleachers, a track and field oval and football grounds at the center. Eventually, however, we all left the private Catholic high school where we all studied and went on to college here in Cebu or elsewhere, and soccer football once again became nothing more than a high school intramurals event in August or September in that small hilly city. Of course, basketball continued being the regular fare in summer as it always is in this country. But those four years I spent studying in that city remain embedded with memories of those summer football leagues.

Fast-forward to the present and this sudden rise—not resurgence since I have never seen this phenomenon ever before—of soccer not just in the national arena but also in the international field has become the darling of Filipino fans. The most important and enduring effect of this phenomenon is that we are not just competing internationally at last, but are even winning in many of them. Now we are showing to the world we are not just good at boxing and martial arts—highly individualized sports we excel in—but also at team sports! And this poses as much of a challenge to our “national pasttime” basketball, which has not fared as well in the international arena despite thousands of players all over the archipelago, thousands of basketball courts and millions poured year in year out.

There is, of course, an uphill battle ahead for the Philippine Football Team Azkals but by finally winning over a significant class of Filipino fans and showing promise abroad, perhaps we are no longer seeing this sport as the favorite only of Barotac Nuevo, the Iloilo town that has consistently produced some of the best players since time immemorial, or of middle-class exclusive private high schools in capital cities. The name Azkals, short for “asong kalye” (stray dogs) is indeed very apt as soccer football has always been marginal in Philippine sports, despite it being the number one sports in Europe and all the former European colonies.

I must mention one seemingly trivial but nonetheless important lesson to be learned from this successful venture, though. And I address this to the mothers who have married foreigners or plan to get hitched with one. I laugh as I hear Phil Younghusband gamely stride into room with a heavily British-accented Tagalog. It is a noble attempt that must be encouraged among all these mestizo players. It helps tremendously that this team has pure-bred Filipinos like Emilio “Chiefy” Caligdong. Otherwise, we look funny with all these mestizos who look more European than Pinoy and who cannot even speak their mother’s native language.

So, dear mothers, if you get married to dashing handsome Caucasians, forget not your native tongue and talk to your kids in your own tongue as they grow up. Expose them to the local Filipino community there so that they get familiar with the nuances of different Pinoy languages. We all know it is an uphill battle as you also need to learn the foreign tongue to survive there but, hey, look at the Chinese in the Philippines. They can speak their father’s tongue even as they code-switch to whatever language is spoken by their Pinay or Tsinay mother. The good thing is that talk is cheap, right?

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A burial was accidentally exposed near the entrance to Fort San Pedro late last week and, with permission from Mayor Michael Rama and with the endorsement of the Cebu City Historical Affairs Commission, I am currently supervising its retrieval, having been deputized by the National Museum for Cebu,  to allow an ongoing drainage work to continue. I will write more about this find next week.