UFL gets glamorous shot in the arm

The existence of a local football league streamed into my consciousness only very recently—last Wednesday night, to be exact—when businessman-sportsman Manny V Pangilinan presented the new acquisitions of the Meralco Loyola Sparks.
Frankly, I didn’t even know that MVP had a football team.
As I was to learn from Randy Roxas, vice chair of the Meralco Sparks Club, this team was formerly known as the Loyola Aguila Football Club and was composed of Ateneo players.
But now that the Sparks have practically overhauled the squad. Only four Ateneo players are left in the team. The rest of the 25-man squad is a mix of foreigners, foreigners with Filipino lineage and competitive new recruits. The aim is to win a first title in the eight-year-old United Football League or UFL.
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That, in effect, was how I came to know about the local football league. Still, it wasn’t enough to get me excited about MVP’s projected announcement  which, according to Meralco’s governor in the PBA Mon Segismundo, had been kept a tightly guarded secret until that rainy Wednesday night.
And then I spotted two familiar faces.
“Are they who I think they are?” I asked Mon, who was seated next to me in the same table.
He nodded and smiled. So did Randy, who was at my right and Al Panlilio, who was recently named chair of the Meralco Loyola Sparks.
Randy, a former football player,  is vice chair of the Sparks Club.
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“The UFL has 20 teams playing in two divisions this season and the Sparks are  ranked in the top four,” Randy informed me.
The MVP Foundation, according to Randy, is supporting two football teams in the UFL—The Meralco Sparks which is categorized as a partner, and the Kaya football Club.
“The national football team, more popularly known as the Azkals, have been distributed among the top four teams of the UFL. We got brothers Phil and James Younghusband,” Randy said.
Only then did I realize the big story behind the evening’s presscon. The Younghusbands took their seat on the presidential table, along with three other foreign-looking athletes, flanking MVP and Al, the tandem that had recently brought to Manila the NBA superstars led by Kobe Bryant.
The three other acquisitions were introduced as the Hartmann Brothers from the United Kingdom—Darren, Matthew and Mark, whose mother is Filipino and father British, just like the Younghusbands.
Randy said the Hartmanns are all very talented.
MVP later joined our table but remained tight-lipped about the figures stipulated in the contract of the Azkals. He just flashed a naughty grin.
Randy, who I learned over dinner was the brother-in-law of Al Panlilio, believes that the presence of the Azkals in the UFL will make for a popular and glamorous league, akin to the PBA in basketball. The next UFL season opens on October 8.
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“Do you know who is the adviser of Manny Pacquiao?” my visibly upset colleague Ronwaldo asked closed to deadline time yesterday afternoon.
I told him that he, of all people, was in a better position to know.
“Well, whoever Manny’s adviser is, he should have cautioned the fighting congressman not to talk about politics in a place like Mexico, where people are not interested to know what his political aspirations are.”
Pacquiao had revealed in an interview his plans to run for Saranggani governor in 2013 and for vice-president in 2016—when he would still not be eligible to run for that office, because a candidate for this position should be at least 40 years old.