Category: Football

Football is popular in Cebu. This I learned the past 36 hours. When I entered the Cebu City Sports Center last Friday night, hundreds of pairs of spiked shoes and knee-high socks greeted my eyes. Yesterday morning, it was the same soccer-frenzy sight: girls kicking, boys sprinting towards the steel goal, coaches shouting, goalies jumping to stop a score…

The world’s No.1 sport is widespread and celebrated in the Philippines’ No.1 city. Take the 7th Thirsty Football Festival, a smorgasbord of 209 teams and 2,500 participants. All of them Cebuanos? No. Plenty arrived on our shores coming from Tubigon, Dumaguete, Tanjay, San Carlos, Iligan, Tacloban and Bacolod. Outside Manila, this event is possibly the largest gathering of footballers. My observations from the Thirsty Cup?

Football and music mix well. Who says you can’t play Boom-Boom Pow while the game is on? At the Thirsty event, hip-hop tunes scream loud from the loudspeakers. And what a fabulous idea. For today’s children are lovers of music; when their favorite songs are heard reverberating throughout the complex, it invigorates the players.

Football is best in the dark. Night games? Sure, why not. Thanks to the gleaming lights inside the Abellana grounds, darkness was transformed into daylight the past two evenings. Last Friday, the games extended until….. 11:30 p.m.

Too late for sports? Nah. As Steve Jobs proclaimed… “Think Different.” I say night games (possibly of any sport) is a superb plan. Minus the intense heat of the 12:30 p.m. sun, playing below the stars  means quicker running without squinting one’s eyes. This idea, I believe, was started in Cebu by the Thirsty event organizers: my brother Charlie, top organizer Neil Montesclaros, and the current president of the Don Bosco Alumni Football Club, Chad Songalia.

Quick Football. The concept of the “Football Festival” is unlike the World Cup games, for example, where 90 minutes are allotted per game. With this “festival,” it’s a brisk and spirited 15 minutes. After a short 7.5 minutes, the two squads change sides. This means that every second matters.

Bad? Well, yes, there’s nothing like the full game. Good? Well, yes, because more games are multiplied and everybody gets to play (especially our out-of-town visitors) in a short span of two days/two nights.

Football is for the family. I know plenty of dads who join the tournament. Their sons join, too. The grandfather of those sons watch the games. Lola brings the food and drinks. The other grandchildren come and cheer. So does the yaya. Plus the classmates. In football, everybody’s present.

Football is for the young. At the Thirsty Cup, the youngest category is the 6-years-and-under bracket. Yesterday, when I arrived at 10 a.m., I was fortunate to have met the finalists for this category. The champion team was the M. Lhuillier squad, composed mainly of children aged five and six years old. The runners-up? They were the San Roque Football Club who, upon a simple check, appeared much smaller. When I asked why, I found out that they had a three-year-old player and, unbelievably, one who was only two years old!

The MLDSF 6-and-under team with their coach (right) and Thirsty owner Bunny Pages

This, I’ve realized, is the superiority of soccer. Since it’s a team sport, one doesn’t have to possess advanced technical skills to join (unlike, for example, tennis or golf). If you can kick, you can join. That two-year-old, Marco Colina (the son of former top player Totot Colina), is the perfect example.

Football is for the once-young. Never mind if football is a highly physical (and injury-inducing) sport where, very often, elbows poke and kicks wallop and shoulders bump, one of the most popular categories is the 40-years-and-older division. The tournament’s oldest player? According to the records, there was one 61-year-old.

Isn’t this amazing? In the same soccer field of the same tournament, a two-year-old toddler kicks and runs like that 61-year-old grandfather.

My brother Charlie Pages took these pictures during the 5th Thirsty Cup two years ago….

An article I wrote two years ago….

Football is the No.1 sport in my daughter’s school, Bright Academy. It’s no. 1 in Don Bosco. In CIS. In Springdale. In Sacred Heart School-Jesuit. Football is the No.1 sport in Asia. In South America. In Germany, Spain, England, France and even in a remote and tiny municipality in our own Panay Island called Barotac. And, in this round, celestial object floating in the universe called Earth, the no.1 sport is the same round, celestial object named soccer.

Take my daughter Jana. She’s the only child I have (so far), and she, of course, is a she—she’s a girl. And girls are NOT allowed to play football, right? There’s a law banning girls from kicking each other, right? And striking that ball with one’s head?

Ha-ha-ha, I know. Am I from another planet? you’d ask. But seriously, wasn’t football—during our time, when we were in school—exclusively for boys? While girls weren’t allowed to sweat and thus played nothing but takyan or “Chinese garter” or their perennial favorite, jackstones?

Yes. But that was then. That was decades ago. That was old school. Today, just like my daughter, football is the most-played sport for all those who wear skirts.

Which brings me to ask: Since most girls in elementary and in high school play football and, since it’s a given that a vast majority of boys play the same sport, then isn’t this game popularized by the Beckhams and Zidanes and Kakas the most popular sport in Cebu today, among students?

It is. Is it, you ask, more popular than basketball? The sport that’s absorbed us for decades ever since the eras of Magic and MJ and now, LBJ and Kobe?

It is. Football is tops. Want proof?

This weekend, visit the Cebu City Sports Center. Starting tomorrow at 5:30 p.m. until 11:30 p.m. on Sunday—that’s three full nights and two full days this weekend—the entire Abellana complex will wallop, kick, jolt, buzz and chant one word: F! O! O! T! B! A! L! L!

It’s called the 5th Thirsty Football Festival and—I must admit being biased in writing this—it’s an event organized by my family’s company and by my younger brother Charlie.

“When we started in 1994,” Charlie related to me, “we held it at the Ayala Center golf driving range. It was a huge success…. we had 90 teams joining.”

This year, I asked, how many are playing?

“228.”

Players?

“No, teams. Multiply that by an average of 10 players per team, that’s nearly 2,300 participants.”

Wow.

“Outside Manila, this should be the country’s biggest football event. And the good news is, we have a lot of out-of-town teams. Close to 200 teams come from Cebu and about 30 groups come from Manila, Bacolod, Dumaguete, Cagayan de Oro, Davao.

“Last year, we only had 140 teams but this year, it’s ballooned to a huge, huge number.”

Categories? Age brackets? I asked.

“Our youngest participants are six years old and below,” said Charlie.

Imagine girls and boys as young as 4, 5 or 6, kicking, tackling, scoring, guarding and raising their frail, little arms at the end for the win?

“Our oldest is the 40 and above category.”

Imagine fathers—and yes, possibly, grandfathers!—kicking, tackling, scoring, guarding and shoving each other for the big V?

Thanks to my brother Charlie (who was a basketball, not football, standout in school), to Neil Montesclaros (our indefatigable Tournament Director who was a former varsity star in Don Bosco and is now a Cebu Football Association director), and their team which includes Chad Songalia and Alex Lim, the 5th Thirsty Football Festival is what it is today: a giant festival.

Charlie with you-know-who

This weekend, if you visit, what will you see?

You’ll see six pitches (courts) scattered inside the giant grass field. You’ll see boys, girls, Men and Ladies competing in 14 divisions. You’ll hear music booming from the giant speakers. You’ll see parents screaming, referees blowing whistles, goalies blocking shots, strikers driving rifle-kicks, coaches losing voices.

Football… what a kick!

HONG KONG—Scanning the sports sections of the two leading English newspapers here, South China Morning Post and China Daily, as I did the past week, one will find that Hong Kong’s five most popular sports are: Number one, soccer. No. 2: the sport with 11 players per team on-field. Three, the game whose favorite Sun.Star columnists are Mike Limpag and Noel Villaflor. Four: it’s an activity played on a rectangular-shaped grass field with goalies on each wing. Fifth, it’s also called… surprise… football!

Yes. In this Chinese self-governing territory that is one of the richest locations on earth (HK’s GDP- per capita of $43,800 is the world’s 14th highest while our beloved country, at $3,300, languishes at No. 162), I ask: what is the one game that is followed the most—well, excluding the “gambling sport” of horse-racing? Kicking. Yup, the sport of the feet.

I was born in the land of La Paz batchoy and the Pancit Molo. A city where, before dining, residents utter the lines, “kaon ta-e!” “kaon ta bala” or “kaon ta anay!”

Iloilo City, it’s named, and, as a child, I have fond memories of lighting up fireworks on Dec. 31 or trekking on a bike during the month of April.

These recollections flashed before my mind when, while scanning through the online news yesterday, my eyes widened and my smile reached ear-to-ear when I read this The Philippine Star title: Ilonggos break soccer marathon record.

Today, September 28, is a special day for our friend in Australia, Graeme Mackinnon. He’s celebrating his xxth birthday and his 20th wedding anniversary! Here are a few photos of the football star…

It’s 1963 and Graeme’s working out at the gym with his dad

(Eric Gay/AP)

You know why I love sports so much? Five words: YOU NEVER KNOW THE ENDING. You don’t. You never do. A $220 million blockbuster movie will telegraph it’s ending midway through the story while a New York Times bestselling novel will snake you through turns and twists and reveal, two-thirds through the 347-pager, that last-page twist.

But sports? Nah. YOU…. NEVER…. KNOW.

Take yesterday’s Super Bowl XLII. The New England Patriots owned the NFL. In fact, wasn’t the league supposed to be renamed the “N.E.L.,” as in the New England League? You see, the Pats are Tiger Woods-like; in the past six years, they’ve snatched three Super Bowls. They owned Randy Moss, the game’s best wide receiver who scored a season touchdown reception record (23) this ‘007. They called Bill Belichick as head coach.