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Wednesday, August 10, 2005
PFF to put up nat’l. club league
By Mike T. Limpag
Sun.Star Correspondent
GOOD news for Filipino football fans.
The Philippine Football Federation (PFF) is set to strengthen its grassroots link and will put up a national league for local clubs in the next two years.
The move is also in line with the Asian Football Confederation’s (AFC) thrust to help the Philippines and other struggling football nations.
The AFC is set to hold the AFC President’s Cup, a tournament for country’s like Afghanistan, Bhutan, Brunei, Cambodia, Chinese Taipei, Guam, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Macau, Mongolia, Nepal, Pakistan, Palestine, Sri Lanka, Tajikistan and Timor Leste.
“We were not able to participate in the first AFC Cup because we did not have a national league,” Cebu Football Association (CebuFA) president Jonathan Maximo said.
Maximo attended the PFF board of governor’s meeting last Saturday in Manila, where the PFF announced the plan to put up a national league in 2007.
The PFF plans to start in the provincial football associations (FA).
“The plan is for each FA to put up a league, not a cup competition,” Maximo said. “The champion in each FA will compete in the area league, like the Liga Mindanao or the Visayas Liga.”
The champions in both leagues will face each other in the national league together with the champion of Ang Liga in Manila and the Luzon League.
The PFF is also set to address the perennial problem of players transferring from one team to another.
“At the start of the competition, each club will only have 25 players and they can not change the line-up until the season ends,” Maximo said.
The line-ups will also be forwarded to the AFC.
“AFC wants to support the clubs here. They want to give them as many matches as possible, so the FA leagues might be double- or triple-round robin,” Maximo said.
Transfer negotiations will now be done club to club instead of player to coach and negotiations will be limited in the off-season in a semi-professional football environment.
(August 10, 2005 issue)
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