Villaflor: Caught between an Azkalnut and a hater
FILIPINOS love underdogs. That is why despite their failure to advance in the next round of the World Cup qualifiers, the Azkals have further endeared themselves to the masses.
Going down fighting against a highly rated, extremely difficult team to beat like Kuwait is more than just...
Villaflor: Desert storm vs. tropical storm
STORMY.
THAT’S Pagasa’s forecast of Metro Manila’s weather up to 5 p.m. today, no thanks to tropical storm Juaning.
Villaflor: Keep Kuwait
IT’S final. Stephan Schrock and Captain Aly Borromeo won’t see action tonight against Kuwait.
This was after the Asian Football Federation formally turned down yesterday the appeal of the Azkals management to lift the suspension of the two players due to accumulated yellow cards.
...
Villaflor: A character-driven desert quest
WHEN they did the unthinkable and raised the World Cup trophy in Germany last Monday morning, the Japanese Women’s Team uplifted as well the spirits of an entire country still reeling from a succession of catastrophes.
Such is the beautiful game’s power to move humanity, and the...
Villaflor: Nobody loves the grassroots
DESPITE football’s growing popularity in the country, thanks to the Azkals, “grassroots development” suffers from so much misconception, if not regarded with an enormous deal of indifference.
In a comment to my previous article about mentoring coaches posted on Pinoyfootball.com,...
Villaflor: Mentoring the coaches (second of 2 parts)
AS THE Don Bosco Boys Home football field emptied of young players and coaches “cooling down” under the heat of high noon in Liloan town, Cebu, Coach Marlon Maro sat relaxed on a monobloc chair to share his views on the state of Philippine football.
It appears to be a good one, as the...
Villaflor: Mentoring the coaches (Part 1)
(First of two parts)
THE past few weeks, Filipino coaches have quietly been working on improving their mentoring skills.
And they’re all over the place, such as at the Don Bosco Boys Home in Liloan, Cebu, where 14 young coaches who have taken their careers seriously are now in the...
Villaflor: Who let the scouts out?
AFTER that masterful performance last Sunday from the Azkals, do you think the Kuwaitis are now quaking in their boots?
We wish.
That doesn’t mean, of course, that Al-Azraq, or The Blues, are taking the new kids on the World Cup block lightly.
Even before the first leg of...
Villaflor: ‘Way bilib’
THE Azkals were clearly at a loss in trying to explain a mediocre team performance against Sri Lanka in the first leg of their World Cup qualifiers match last Wednesday.
So they blamed the football field, well at least at first. The poor condition of the pitch in the Sugathadasa Stadium...
Villaflor: Soccer Ending, anyone?
THE beautiful game has its share of dirt. Match fixing is one.
This June alone, three reports —two of them in Asia—about the illegal activity made the rounds.
The first one was about a Malaysian youth coach who was charged early this month, according to an Associated Press report...
Villaflor: We Believe or make-believe?
“LONG is the way, and hard, that out of Hell leads up to light” – John Milton, Paradise Lost
THE “We Believe” campaign, in its simplest terms, aims to make the public aware that the Azkals’ victory “is also the nation’s triumph,” apart from bringing the team closer to the fans.
The...
Villaflor: That World Cup dream
EVER since the Azkals’ fairytale run in the AFF Suzuki Cup finals last year, I’ve noticed how quite a number of people confuse the national team’s zeal for delusion.
Among the worst that I’ve come across are those who insist that the Azkals have become so overconfident they believe they...
Villaflor: Barca redux
WHEN it comes to watching the live telecast of the European Champions League final, I always depend on this trio of football nuts for company: Dr. Xavi, Dr. Basti and Atty. Ted.
So long as work or other commitments don’t get in the way, I can be certain one of them would show up at 2:30 a...
Villaflor: Azkals fans get the ‘ruff’ treatment
IT’S not easy being an Azkal. To acknowledge the fans, he has to mingle with hundreds of strangers, pose for photographs, and sign autographs over and over again. It can get taxing, but such is the price of fame.
But sometimes it’s not easy being a fan either. Just ask those who joined a...
Villaflor: United they fall?
I DON’T mind if the Azkals don’t want to be disturbed as they wrap up the last few modules of their “Let’s Get Exclusive Seminar,” including in-depth lectures on “Giving the Local Paparazzi the Runaround” and “Playing Hard to Get.”
So let’s leave them in peace, until this afternoon when...
Villaflor: Are the Little Azkals ready?
FOR six weeks, some two dozen boys under 13 years old have been training in a secluded campus some 25 kilometers from Cebu City.
At the Don Bosco Boys Home, they would sleep as a team, take their meals as a team, and have nothing on their minds but football. They would train on the...
Villaflor: Making sense of the first leg experiment
SOMETHING odd happened during the first leg of the PFF Suzuki Under-23 National Cup Finals between fierce rivals Bacolod and Iloilo, the home team.
It wasn’t the home team losing that made it odd but the game going into extra time in the first leg. Now this was unusual, if not unheard of...
Villaflor: A football tragedy in three parts
“IT is convenient, for the purposes of analysis,” says the English novelist Martin Amis in an essay, “to look at the history of England managership since 1970 as a drama, or tragedy, in three parts or phases.”
For Amis, the common denominator of these phases is the “nervous breakdown” of...
Villaflor: More than a billion
A BILLION dollars.
That’s how much Manchester City, according to an AP report yesterday, had spent on players since 2008.
Or, if you ask its critics, how much its owners had shelled out to buy its first top-level trophy in four decades, granting that Stoke City follows the script...
Villaflor: The long road to Wembley
THE Pacquiao vs. Mosley fight was an example of poor match-making: a juggernaut in his prime against an ageing, overmatched foe.
The 39-year-old “Sugar” Shane Mosley used to be a “slick” boxer with a fearsome arsenal, who stood his ground, but last Sunday, Manny Pacquiao forced the...
Villaflor: Pacquiao the Azkal
DURING an awarding ceremony last March in Manila, Manny Pacquiao, the greatest boxer in the world today, admitted to the crowd that he was an Azkals fan.
While that came as a surprise to many, I’ve always believed that the Pacman, being the self-effacing sportsman that he is, keeps tabs...
Villaflor: Mad, mad Madrid
IN 2009, Real Madrid went on a spending spree that was as record breaking as it was outrageous.
Los Blancos spent $370 million in all to land Cristiano Ronaldo, Kaka, Karim Benzema and Xavi Alonso. For Ronaldo, Madrid splurged a whopping $131 million, and for Kaka, $92 million.
In...
Villaflor: The insolence of Jose Mourinho
IRREVERENT and insolent, Real Madrid manager Jose Mourinho is arguably one of the top two finest tacticians in club football this century, never mind his most recent failure, a 2-0 loss at home soil in the Champions League semifinals first leg against FC Barcelona.
Villaflor: Two blueprints: Football Village and Guv’s Cup
THIS is how the Football Village would look, said Cebu Football Association (CFA) president Richard Montayre, as he showed me a slide show of the project’s renderings on his laptop.
Villaflor: Alcantara Memoir: Lost in (Google) translation
A PACKAGE landed on my office desk today. It came all the way from Australia, from a man named Graeme Mackinnon, a football guru whose fondness for the Philippines is beyond words.
Graeme and I share a fascination for a historical football figure named Paulino Alcantara. Once, the...
