IT’S February once again and for almost two decades, that only means one thing for Cebu Football. It’s the Thirsty Football Cup.
Cebu’s longest running football festival has become one of the biggest in the country, trailing only Manila’s Alaska Cup and Bacolod’s Ceres Cup in terms of participants. But when it comes to prestige and the level of competition, I think they are all equal. And mind you, Thirsty can’t compete with the Alaska Cup and Ceres Cup when it comes to the number of participants only because of Cebu’s perennial problem with the venue.
Not many may be aware but I think the Thirsty Cup played a key role in the exponential growth of football in the early 2000s. The tournament and its partnership with the Sacred Heart School-Ateneo de Cebu. Then, Ateneo maintained a pitch at the Cebu Business Park, where a couple of buildings now stand. It was right smack in the middle of the city where numerous jeepney routes pass.
Once during a Thirsty Cup, when I was in a PUJ full of passengers, I heard a couple of mothers say when they saw the tournament.
“Girls can play football too?” “They have games for kids also?” “Public schools can join? I thought football is only for rich kids.” Having the Thirsty Cup where a lot of people unfamiliar with the game can see it opened a lot of opportunities.
Most of the schools then couldn’t form teams for the 11-a-side game, hence it wasn’t offered in their sports program. The seven-a-side game allowed small schools to put up their teams. Yes, for a while, the mushrooming of football festivals may have stunted the growth of the players skills-wise, but I think the coaches have now learned to adjust.
There was a time that it seemed, every month there was a football festival and the players were limited to “quickie football.” I remember a lot of online discussions regarding the perils of the game, but now I think Cebu has reached that ideal number of festivals--a major one at the start and end of the year, and a few minor ones in between.
With a division as young as Players 7, I think it’s safe to say that all footballers in Cebu have had their start at the Thirsty Cup. I know some of the good ones who eventually made the national teams—Paolo Pascual, Val Calvo, Enzo Ceniza, Niko Villacin to name a few—played in the Thirsty Cup.
I won’t be surprised if this year’s P7 players will someday be playing for the national youth teams considering the number of Cebuanos who made the cut in recent years.
From merely covering the tournament, a couple of years ago, I also became a participant with my son playing for Don Bosco. Heck, a photo of him and my daughter even won for the photographer the top prize in the event’s photo contest and for weeks on end, he’d rant why it’s not the people in the photo—but the photographer—who got all the “congratulations”.
That’s another thing the Thirsty Cup started. Holding a photo contest, which in a way helps promote the game as the photogs promote their photos in social media.