There are moments when defeat can actually exude the sweet scent of victory as when our heroic Philippine Azkals lost to Kuwait, 2-1, in an enthralling game before thousands of cheering fans at the Rizal Memorial Football Stadium last Thursday
There was a moment of utter exhilaration when Stephan Schrock struck a magnificent goal that would have made the highlight reel anywhere in the world.
Up 1-0 at halftime against a Kuwaiti team that plays football nine months a year and is one of the most formidable teams from football-crazy Middle East was undoubtedly the finest achievement by a Philippine team as long as we could remember.
For a team that hardly played together for a year and a half, the amazing Azkals showed the world that we can compete at the highest level in the No. 1 sport in the universe. It didn’t matter to our dogged fighters that Kuwait had just been elevated to No. 97 in the international rankings of Fifa, the governing body for football, while we had dropped three notches to 162. We played much of the match on fairly even terms.
That the fans who trekked to the stadium and braved the rains and the traffic stayed behind long after the match, clearly demonstrated that we have, at long last, embraced a sport where we had for decades become the whipping boys in Asia.
The international football community could never understand our unbridled passion for basketball and lack of interest in football. Now, thanks to men like team manager Dan Palami, Philippine Football Federation president Nonong Araneta, coach Michael Weiss and a bunch of young men who have demonstrated a burning desire to play for our country and to carve a name for themselves, football has taken a foothold in the consciousness of the Filipino sports fan.
The cross section of people who came to watch the Azkals both in the match against Sri Lanka and last Thursday against Kuwait showed that football is a sport that can create a sense of national togetherness no matter what the outcome.
We were beaten but nowhere were we disgraced. We demonstrated a level of skill, a fiercely competitive mindset and the courage to take on a powerhouse in football and not back off. That is typically Filipino. We draw on indomitable courage to try as best as we could to even the playing field.
We may have lost but we succeeded in awakening a spirit for the game that is bound to grow in the months and years ahead.
Much of the credit should also go to the media, both television and print. Their unstinted support for the Azkals, epitomized by our own leading newspaper, the Philippine Daily Inquirer, and the giant broadcast network ABS-CBN, speaks volumes of their commitment to football and to sports and youth development.
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While our so-called sports leaders engage in endless bickering there are a few National Sports Associations quietly and diligently pursuing grassroots development programs to hone the skills of young men and women so they could compete internationally and bring pride and joy to our nation.
One such NSA is the Amateur Boxing Association of the Philippines where the esteemed businessman-sportsman Manny V. Pangilinan is chairman and his trusted ally Ricky Vargas is president.
The gold medal victory of 15-year-old super flyweight Eumir Felix Marcial, who beat tough Cengiz Onat of Turkey, 9-7, in a battle of southpaws proved that the Abap grassroots development program is on the right track.
Vargas was elated at what he called “the triumph of the Pinoy spirit.” He was also generous enough to give credit to executive director Ed Picson, who discovered Marcial in one of the national meets conducted by the Abap. In his first international competition abroad, Marcial proved to be the darling of fight fans by scoring one spectacular victory after another.
It simply showed that NSAs that stay away from debilitating politics in sports and concentrate on the task at hand will get the results such dedicated efforts deserve. Marcial is a glowing example of such a policy and a tribute to Pangilinan, Vargas, Picson and the Abap.