THE domestic league will finally start in a few days as the Philippine Football League will hold its own bubble, only the second sports league allowed in the country since the pandemic began.
Though individual sports have been allowed, for the rest of the country basketball and football are still barred.
In Cebu, those who played basketball have been the guys who went viral for breaking the rules and it’s unlikely that will change soon. The same is true for football and I think it’s safe to say that economic recovery, not sports, is the number one concern of local officials.
And of course, you can add to that stack of problems the recent flooding which hit the city, which makes concerns about when we can play again unimportant.
Still, that doesn’t mean we just all have to wait for the go signal in the interim. We can all make our plans. At least, that’s what the Central Visayas Football Association (CVFA) is doing. This was supposed to be the group’s breakout year, it had numerous plans, not only for Metro Cebu but for Bohol as well, bringing the tourist island to the fold of the Philippine Football Federation hierarchy. In fact, it had already had a couple of tournaments and seminars conducted but of course, everything went south when Covid-19 invaded our shores.
I really don’t know when we are going to have the football festivals again or if we’d ever have them on the scale as before. But I do know how the CVFA plans to pick up the sport again.
Futsal. In the barangays.
This has been the dream of many, to see futsal start in the barangay and in the Philippine setup. It should be the logical move. I mean, there’s rarely a green patch in the city, much more a football field for everyone who wants to learn the sport. But we all know that almost every barangay has a multipurpose gym with a basketball court in the middle of it.
All you need is a futsal goal to convert it into a futsal court and that’s what the CVFA is planning now. The association is having a few sets made and people interested to start a program for their barangays may have them—of course, that’s granted after the IATF (Inter-Agency Task Force on Emerging Infectious Diseases) gives the go signal.
I hope the barangay captains consider having them and they only need to look no further than Kamagayan for inspiration. Kamagayan, which is one of the recipients of the project, doesn’t have a field nor a futsal court, but has a football program that kept kids in school, with some even being chased by recruiters.
Futsal made it possible.