WE'VE learned to associate 70 with a failing grade and for the Philippine men’s futsal team in the AFF Futsal Championship that is not only their grade, that’s the number of goals they conceded in their first three games.
They lost 21-0 to Indonesia, 24-0 to host Vietnam and finally, 25-0 to Myanmar. They got a one-day rest before they closed their campaign against fellow bottom feeder Brunei, which lost by “only” nine goals to Indonesia.
It’s not a hammering by any standard. It’s more than that. It’s a Mjolniring by Thor with the Green Grumpy Monster taking a few swips kind of hammering.
That comes, of course, after the U19 team’s twin 6-0 losses in the AFC qualifiers in Cambodia prompted Dan Palami to push for a change in how the national youth teams are selected and train. The U19 disaster, followed last month’s U18 disaster that saw our youth team getting beaten black and blue by Vietnam (5-0), Myanmar (7-0) and Indonesia, 9-0.
If we are so bad, why bother sending teams at all? You might say but as a member of the AFF, I think we are required to participate and in the latest AFF Futsal Championship, we sent a college team to compete against the men.
Results are predictable, of course.
Who’s at fault? The PFF, the team or the coach? I think each played a part but the bigger problem is futsal isn’t really that big in the country and heck, we don’t even have a national futsal tournament.
We have girls futsal in the Palarong Pambansa system but again, the players are basically the ones who will play the field version when they reach college.
The results in Vietnam show how big a gap we need to close in order to be within spitting distance with our neighbors in the Asean region when it comes to futsal. We closed that gap pretty quick post 2010 with the Azkals but in futsal, I don’t think that’s going to be possible.
Some areas like in Cebu are starting a futsal grassroots program and that’s something that’s going to take years to bear fruit. For the rest of the country, I’m not even sure if they have a futsal program.
Seventy is a failure but what would make this worse than a failure is if the PFF doesn’t take any steps to address it.