FRANKLY, we didn’t expect any good news to emanate from Pyongyang, the forbidding capital of hermetic North Korea. We did not expect an anxious contest the way Gilas Pilipinas made us feel when it vaulted into the knockout phase of the International Basketball Federation (Fiba) Asia Championship after a scrambling start.
Rather, we were prepared for a rout, somewhere in the range of five goals to nil. “Maybe even as high as eight goals to nil, a massacre,” a friend of three decades and a real connoisseur in football, warned on the eve of the October 8 qualifier.
After all, the Philippine Azkals were literally in the lion’s den, the Kim Il Sung stadium (named after North Korea’s founding father), reputedly the toughest place in Asia to play football.
It was not just about the North Korean eleven, excellent to begin with, and pacesetter in Group H of the current World Cup eliminations in Asia. It was also about the crowd that rooted for its team—a choreographed spectacle of 50,000-plus souls unsurpassed by no other class of Asian fans.
Uniformly clad in red and white and blue, they were boisterous, and they chanted wildly and sang “nationalistic songs” with a decibel that could make any visiting team faint or lose heart.
On the pitch the North Koreans have been known for their lightning strike, a trait that Uzbekistan discovered in June to its grief. The hosts killed their foes with four rapid goals right in the first 30 minutes of play.
In came the Azkals on October 8 and they changed the way we perceive them. From the boys the Uzbeks had earlier pushed around—soft, unfocused and distracted by all the glitter and celebrity that now line their path—the Azkals in Pyongyang fought like men, gutsy, gritty and heroic.
Under pressure from the North Koreans’ relentless attack—wave upon wave of raids into the Filipinos’ zone, scrapping for a breach in the wall that didn’t show up—the Azkals didn’t buckle. They were unbending.
In the words of Tom Dooley, their unassuming coach, “They just fought and never gave up.” His captain, the heartthrob Phil Younghusband, thought the team put up an incredibly courageous stand. “It was just down to the players working hard and competing,” he said.
The football reporter Cedelf Tupas, the only Filipino journalist to accompany the Azkals, called it a “defensive performance for the ages.” They proved “equal to every attack” and “left the hosts their boisterous supporters frustrated.” It’s a pity that the game was not beamed to Manila by satellite television.
Let me introduce the backline in that game to whom we owe this gem. Jerry Lucena, Luke Woodland and Amani Aguinaldo. They defused every volley of fire launched into the wall by the tall, strong and very physical hosts.
And when the ball got through, keeper Neil Etheridge tended the goal with precision. Twice he came up with spectacular saves in stoppage time.
“It was a difficult game,” Dooley was quoted as saying after the game. “With all the long balls they [North Koreans] sent, it was difficult.”
The youngster Aguinaldo, only 20 years old but a strapping 5-foot-11, had the most difficult task: to shadow the deadliest North Korean striker, Pak Kwang Ryong.
Pak, it was reported, plays overseas, in the Swiss league, a rare individual privilege in this hermetic state. Such exposure to the European league is an edge he could have used like a cutting knife in this game.
Another outstanding Azkals defender, the injured Rob Gier who warmed the bench, thought Aguinaldo did something special. “I felt he was absolutely outstanding,” Gier said, quoted by Tupas. “He stood up to a big challenge. He played against a very good center-forward and didn’t give him a sniff.” Wow! Aguinaldo could not have played harder in his entire career.
It wasn’t a defensive effort all the way, as the Azkals actually threatened through Stephen Schrock and Younghusband. The latter’s free kick in the first half sailed over the bar.
So now the Azkals are miraculously still alive in the hunt for a World Cup qualifying slot. After four home-and-away matches, the North Koreans are still on top with 10 points, followed by the Philippines with seven. Uzbekistan has six and Bahrain three. Yemen, the last team, is still winless.
It would be too much to expect the Azkals advancing over the more fancied teams in their preliminary group. But they have shown Asia, and the world, that they could play football and are no pushovers on the pitch.
Coach Dooley could never have been more proud of his charges’ feat. To survive in Pyongyang, he intoned, “speaks a lot of this team and the fighting spirit that they showed.”
North Korean Coach Kin Chak Bong, speaking through an interpreter, said the Azkals surprised him, “Today they are very strong, actually stronger than expected.”
So on to the Azkals’ next stop: Bahrain.