After a football overload that an exhilarating Copa America and European Championship tournament brought more than a week ago, fans can enjoy a breather from the sport.
That’s not an entirely good thing because there’s no such thing as too much football to a fan.
But the wait won’t be that long, though, as your favorite leagues will kick off the season as early as the first week of August.
Personally, I look forward to the Philippines Football League (PFL), but while the new season is slated to begin on Aug. 21, details remain sketchy.
That’s a month from now, and yet there’s still no final list of participants to date.
The latest news says the Philippine Football Federation (PFF) “still looks to increase the number of clubs in 2021” from six, so its club licensing body “will meet to assess the applicants.”
That means the licensing body actually hasn’t held a meeting yet to decide the fate of the three applicants with only a month to go before the season starts.
The previous season was finalized at the last minute at the height of the pandemic, which is excusable and understandable.
But now it’s 2020 all over again, and it’s becoming a bad habit that no one has bothered to shake off.
From the perspective of football fans, this is rather disappointing, and I cannot blame many of them if they lose further interest in Philippine club football.
Further, this is grossly unfair to all the participating clubs that have sacrificed so much for the league and the sport.
Sure the pandemic, with all those necessary protocols, has brought about extraordinary challenges to the sport’s governing body, but who in the football community has been spared?
And the same football community looks to the PFF for directions that they may collectively steer the sport to the path of recovery.
This is why organizing the 2021 PFL season in a manner that holds the fans’ interest is crucial to treading such a path.
But the view from here shows much haze and uncertainty, and it doesn’t help that updates from official sources are scant and sketchy.
Perhaps, the PFF has all these figured out and the football community is in for a big PFL surprise.
Then again, the very least that the PFF can give weary football fans and stakeholders right now is some clarity.