IT is occurring with sickening regularity, a return to practices of the past. Finalized less than a week before the AFC U19 qualifiers, our U19 team had their breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks with an extra bag for takehome in a 6-0 loss to Myanmar in Cambodia.
A month back, our U18s got hammered by Indonesia, 9-0, Vietnam, 5-0, and Myanmar, 7-0. We also lost to Brunei, 3-2 in an AFF tournament, the lowest rung in international football.
We used to laugh at our senior team, of how a hastily-assembled squad formed two weeks before a tournament is supposed to get competitive. Then, after the competition, the players leave for their respective clubs, only to be called up a week or two before another potential disastrous campaign.
It is ironic that now that our men’s senior team has attained its highest ever Fifa ranking at 116, our youth teams are performing badly, seemingly only good for fattening the goal difference of the contenders. We can’t continue this setup because our youth teams are supposed to be where our future players in the senior team would be from.
I think the entry of the PFL had a hand in this one; clubs needed to get the best coaches in the land and among them are Aris Caslib and Marlon Maro, the last two technical directors of the Philippine Football Federation who are now with Meralco and Davao.
Is it a coincidence that the decline of our youth teams coincided with their departure?
We could dig up the reasons or we could move forward and It’s good that we are moving forward.
The disastrous results are being noticed by the PFF.
“Time to take drastic action. This was how the Azkals were before we changed it in 2010. Major announcement in a few days,” Dan Palami tweete the other day.
Before 2010, the senior team, like the youth teams of today, were formed two weeks before a tournament and of course, the results were predictable.
This drastic action may be along similar lines and I can’t wait for Dan to make it official. We can’t return to being the laughing stock of Asean football.
And believe me, if we continue in this path, we will be.