TWO scores and a decade ago, they were Asia’s laughingstock, written off cavalierly as “the babes in the woods.”
So that when our national football team, known by its feisty, mysterious moniker Azkals, shocked Bahrain, two goals to one, in their World Cup qualifying campaign on Thursday night, it made even the most jaded fans stand up to cheer.
Too bad there was only a sparse home crowd scattered in the gallery of the new Philippine Sports Stadium in Bocaue, Bulacan.
We may never know if the match ever pulled in a respectable viewership on live television coverage.
But this does not diminish the enormity of the achievement. Arguably the most talented Philippine side ever assembled, the new Azkals have gone farther than any of their predecessors.
They have cast their misty eyes for the first time on the gates of the promised land. Which makes us wonder, with trembling anticipation, if our nearly half a century of wandering in the wilderness of football is finally coming to an end.
This victory in Group H seemingly defies logic. But one might ask, “Why not?” Bahrain, ranked 107 in the football world, 30 rungs above the Azkals, has the size and speed, its attacking halfbacks and frontlines were constant threats, its defense solid with wide bodies.
These Azkals, however, have escaped stereotyping. The Azkals of four years ago, which had some solid achievement to boot, already looked impressive by any standard.
But their new incarnation was even better—better with their physicality, their fearlessness and their sense of the game.
One could see the plays developing, raising our anticipation, as we followed the flow of every pass or storming run on either wing and that inevitable feed struck to center.
What made these Azkals different was that they had more than a Phil Younghusband, our undisputed monarch in the pitch with 42 goals in 70 international matches, to disturb the defense and unsettle the keeper.
Phil had the touches and made pinpoint passes, which made him even more deadly.
But look at the scoreline. Those two goals were not by Phil but by names that are bound for stardom, close on the heels of his starstruck path.
Substitute Misagh Bahadoran caught Phil’s perfect pass at the 50th minute and slotted the go-ahead goal after a gruelling scoreless first half.
Javier Platino found the net nine minutes later from a scramble inside the box. Bahrain escaped the ignominy of a shutout defeat with goal in stoppage time.
A lot of credit goes to Coach Thomas Dooley, who retooled the Azkals, and he knew absolutely how they made it happen.
“It was team effort tonight,” he said. “We had to work hard offensively and defensively.”
My initial fear, I must confess, was that these Azkals may be walking into another terrible quicksand of disappointment. Now I have put my side on history.
Whipping Bahrain was no small achievement. This is a defining victory, one that will echo through the years in the footnotes of history books.
Since 2010 at the Asian Cup in Hanoi, in a triumphant stint that embedded football back into the nation’s consciousness, the Azkals have taken Asia by storm, on occasion authoring historical gems that indubitably raised them as serious crown princes.
The road to the promised land is long, hazardous and planted with land mines. The Azkals have nine months to put their genius to work, in qualifying matches against tougher opponents, in such hostile places as the Middle East, Central Asia and the secretive city of Pyongyang in North Korea, one of the remaining communist bulwarks in the free world.
Just as formidable are fears at home, because of our endless sufferance of self-inflicted wounds.
I will go to that point in a while, but let me digress a bit to the International Football Federation, known by its French acronym Fifa, and the seemingly indestructible Sepp Blatter, its four-term president.
Four days after winning a fifth term unopposed, the 79-year-old Swiss beat an inglorious exit.
He was initially spared the fate of senior Fifa officials, who were caught in a web of corruption and bribery charges relative to the choice of South Africa as 2010 World Cup host.
They were arrested and handcuffed by US agents after a raid on a Zurich hotel.
Blatter was tarred later on by a new round of investigations, this time on the selection of Russia and Qatar as hosts of the 2018 and 2022 World Cups, respectively.
Corruption in sports has grown so pervasive that it spares nobody—amateur and professional athletes, agents and clubs, colleges and associations, promoters and organizers and even the sports media.
They are caught in perpetual morass of hypocrisy where morality and ethics have been reduced to fiction.
The same case of greed and skulduggery afflicts Philippine sports.
Top officials of the Philippine Sports Commission (PSC) were embroiled in the alleged misuse of public funds allocated for the 2005 Southeast Asian Games, which Manila hosted for the third time.
Poisoned politics have penetrated the inner sanctum of the Philippine Olympic Committee (POC), the apex of the pyramid, for alleged election-fixing to place its protégés in prime positions in various national sports associations (NSAs).
For the uninitiated, the PSC is headed by Ritchie Garcia, a rabid golfing pal of Jose “Peping” Cojuangco, the POC head now on his fourth term.
The scion of the Hacienda Luisita clan has held on to this juicy post amid bribery and corruption scandals rocking the local sports scene.
Even the choice of his daughter, Mikee, as representative of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to the country, is wrapped in mystery because the sacrosanct post is traditionally reserved for eminent patriarchs only in sports.
I am not too conversant with Peping Cojuangco except that he was an affable politician and a beloved humanitarian.
He was impeccably groomed, moneyed and gifted with a dignified position in his halcyon days in Congress.
When he got involved in sports, everybody was excited because he brought with him a blue bloodline and a touted political clout.
He was, after all, no ordinary presidential brother who would not whisper to the ears of his presidential sister.
But our hopes became business as usual. There were no additional funds for the welfare of the athletes in Cory Aquino’s time.
Our historic triumph in the 2005 SEA Games was a tribute to the all-out support of the succeeding administration.
Despite power and money, Peping Cojuangco was not spared of trouble.
A mutiny, staged by a breakaway group in his own turf at the Philippine Equestrian Federation, almost cost him the presidency of his closed association.
After a slew of court suits and a spate of defeats that humiliated Filipinos in the SEA Games, Asian Games and the Olympics, Cojuangco and company remain unscathed in their posts and unchallenged in their turfs.
Sports officialdom is filled with miscellaneous characters that have done little or nothing except to fill up their pockets and enslave the poor athletes, some of whom have switched to corporate support to stay alive.
A parody that has attracted so much sound and fury was the exclusion of the Philippine Dragon Boat Federation (PDBF) from the Olympic body whose (mis)fortune was the overseas victory of its paddlers who were not sanctioned by the POC.
As a consequence of their action, the Dragon Warriors, as the paddlers were popularly known, were dropped from the PSC payroll.
It is to their credit that despite the snub, they won five gold medals at the 10th World Dragon Boat Racing Championships in Florida.
There should be a courageous move to rid sports of politics and corruptions the way the American authorities built up strong cases against the Fifa untouchables so that the culprits are haled to court, tried and incarcerated, for good.
These are troublesome issues, as serious as drug use and abuse, since corruption of athletes and officials have distorted the real values of life and the uplifting benefits of sports.
Somehow, the amazing Azkals’ win is like April showers, a great relief from life’s agonies and tragedies.
This is the grandeur of spectator sports like football, at a time Fifa is in a moral turmoil, and the oversized PHL contingent did not do much as promised at the 28th Southeast Asian Games in Singapore.