Philippine Football Realities

The recent showing of our football national men’s team in the AFF Suzuki Cup where they got into the semifinals has put football in the national consciousness. But the reality is that our country only moved up one slot to the 150th spot in the latest Dec. 2010 FIFA world rankings. Yes, that’s how far we have to go if we want to see our team playing in the World Cup Finals scheduled for 2014 in Brazil.

Indonesia, which beat our team twice in those two AFF semifinal games, moved up by 8 slots to the 127th ranking. The present rankings of our other ASEAN neighbors are as follows: Thailand – 121st (down by 7), Vietnam – 137th (up by 2), Singapore – 140th (down by 2), Malaysia – 144th (up by 6), Myanmar – 149th (down by 5), Cambodia – 166th (up by 4), Laos – 169th (up by 2), Brunei Darussalam – 197th.

Now, it’s a most welcome development that the Philippine Football Federation (PFF) has approved the hiring of a new coach for the national team, Hans Michael Weiss, a German. Note that Germany (West Germany then) has won the World Cup thrice, first in 1954, then in 1974, and again in 1990.

As reported in the papers, Weiss served as the coach of Rwanda’s Under-17 side and technical director of Rwanda’s national federation. Weiss also had stints with the Chinese Football Association and internships with Real Madrid in Spain, Arsenal in England, and River Plate and FC Kaiserslautern in Germany.

But regardless of who the coach is—in fact, I personally believe we don’t need a foreign coach for we can have our own homegrown coach—football is a simple game of mind and stamina.

For example, oftentimes players tend to dribble or hold the ball too long when passing to a teammate can result in longer distances covered in less time and with less effort. Precisely, football is a game of 11 players each side. Indeed, moving the ball, that is, constant and accurate passing, has always been the key to glorious goals and championships!

If you watched our team’s games with Indonesia, our players had no real team offense and could not keep up with the speed of the Indonesians. Apparently, the team simply relied heavily on the two Young husbands.

Again, football is a game where you need to be able to run and run and run for over 90 minutes. You can’t be walking around to wait for the ball to come to you. And that’s sadly what our team ended up doing in the dying minutes of the last game against Indonesia.

But our team has certainly brought us great honor.