INQUIRER Sports

WHILE JOGGING LAST WEEKEND, I chanced upon a spirited soccer festival with schoolgirls and their families enjoying the sun that finally lit up the city.

After days of rain, the heat was delightful and the players didn?t seem to mind that portions of the pitch still had patches of mud. Three large fields were cut up into smaller segments to accommodate more games. They really didn?t need the whole field and just to kick the ball on the grass was a bliss.

I mused on why the game is called ?soccer? in some parts of the world. It?s easy to conclude that it?s the Americans who coined the phrase to differentiate it from their football.

That?s not exactly correct, as Michael Scott Moore explains in Spiegel Online. The British, who invented football, gave the ?soccer? nickname for ?association football? to differentiate it from rugby.

Although many agree that soccer is the appropriate term, many still hold on to ?football? because of tradition and the point of the game, which is to kick the ball.

You then try to understand why ?the beautiful game,? as it is tagged by the superstars and fans of the sport, is not as popular here as it is in the rest of the world. It seems so easy to blame basketball again and the American influence at the turn of the century that emphasized baseball and hoops.

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Despite the problems of the sport, the game is very much alive here as it is played and followed passionately in schools, alumni groups and clubs throughout the country.

There is undue pressure for us to be passionate about the game simply because the rest of the world is deeply into it. The popular sentiment is that our physique is suited for soccer rather than basketball, a sport where height and heft reign supreme.

Similarly, our accomplishments in the past are frequently used as a reminder that we should return to the game more ardently.

A sport cannot be forced upon a culture or people and should be marketed and promoted on its own merits. Soccer must live with the reality that other sports are more popular in this country and should just continue to work and build on its strengths.

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That?s why when the Fifa World Cup in South Africa swings around in 2010, the Philippines will watch. Hotels will be offering viewing hours in selected outlets, schools will have their teams watching together and football cities and towns will have public viewing posts.

Many will follow the games in the oddest hours, rescheduling their days to accommodate sleep and passion as well.

We will have a special interest in the Asian qualifiers as we try to understand why the other countries can make it to the World Cup and we can?t. There will also be keen attention on the African nations because they will have their fans in full force, and their desire to play well against the very best on home turf will be there.

We will surely follow the superpowers of the sport and the players who give meaning to the phrase ?the beautiful game.? It is a marvel to watch the game played at the highest levels of skill since no hands are used, the field is enormous and the scoring extremely difficult.

We do get a kick out of the game because it gets the young ones to play outdoors and older ones to recall their youth. And then we will all watch when the world?s best players come to play next year, even if the debate over calling it soccer or football never really ends.