Philippines makes football history

Dubai: Last Sunday, the Philippine national football team won through to the second round of the World Cup qualifiers for the first time in their 104-year history with a 5-1 aggregate win over Sri Lanka.

The Azkals (a Filipino street lingo for stray dogs) as they are better known, now face a much sterner test against Gulf Cup-winning Kuwait over two legs — July 23 in Kuwait City and July 28 in Manila.

Although minnows — 57 places behind Kuwait in the Fifa world rankings at 159 — it’s fair to say momentum is in the red, white and blue corner, as football in the archipelago emerges from beneath the shadow of other Spanish and American colonial offerings such as basketball and boxing.

Thanks to the investment of Dan Palami, the CEO of a Makati-based railway construction group intent on uniting the 7,107 islands by track, football infrastructure is also on the rise.

First signs of a turnaround in the country’s footballing fortune came with their surprise upset of Vietnam in the 2010 AFF Suzuki Cup. The Azkals eventually went out to Indonesia in the semifinals last December. In March they qualified for the 2012 AFC Challenge Cup for the first time in a history otherwise marked by a lone Far Eastern Championship Games win in 1913.

Difference

The Philippines have never qualified for an Asian Cup or World Cup finals. The difference now, compared to previous World Cup qualifiers — where they have withdrawn — is that the team is made up largely of players with dual citizenship, a true indication of globalisation and the wider migration patterns that have helped fuel the Filipino economy.

Palami, with the help of German coach Michael Weiss, has trailed the world in search of professional players with Filipino heritage. British-Filipino brothers Phil and James Younghusband, of Chelsea youth fame, only learned of their eligibility to represent their mother’s homeland after a mysterious Championship Manager gamer got in contact.

Now they are the tactical backbone and marketable face of a national team 6,687 miles from their native Ashford in Middlesex.

Otherwise Fulham’s reserve goalkeeper Neil Etheridge and Ado Den Haag midfielder Paul Mulders are the only two playing in top-flight European leagues.

In the same manner that helped the Republic of Ireland qualify to three of the last six World Cup finals, borrowing heavily from the ranks of their English cousins, the Philippines has a starting line-up entirely devoid of Filipino-born talent. Four Brits, two Germans, two Americans, one Dutchman and a Spaniard and a lone natural-born Filipino made up the first team last Sunday.

While France won the 1998 World Cup having trailed their African colonies for flair, the Philippines is at least hoping to qualify for a major tournament by raiding its former colonisers.

Another element in the rise of this burgeoning football nation stems from a suffocating media and show-business scene, fuelled by the interests of predominately young, female audiences who have jettisoned names like the Younghusband brothers to stardom in just six months.

Not since the “Spice Boys” of Liverpool in the mid-90s have so few been idolised by so many, for— as yet—so little. Their national team qualification is as much an interest as their eligibility as young bachelors and the marketing strategy for the team, who model in their spare time and are mobbed like pop stars the rest, has snowballed whether there’s a game on or not.

The brand has far from suffered upon hearing a number of players are dating Filipina celebrities. And unlike Sir Alex Ferguson, who at Manchester United would have those “too big for their boots” out on their ear, Azkals officials are actively encouraging the brush with stardom.

A game which took the best part of a century to develop in other parts of the world has sky-rocketed in six months in the archipelagic state. But, as for the future of the sport, the Philippines must now work backwards to develop club structure and homegrown pathways into the national team in order to sustain it.

In comparison, a game against Kuwait is just a small hurdle.