Thanks. I sent the list to the GM. The roster for the friendly against Kuwait and Jordan has been changed by the way since mainstays like Tabinas, Sato, etc. couldn't make it so they were replaced by alternates. Modify your expectations accordingly.
Azkals fall to Kuwait 2-0. The Philippines were able to hold off the Kuwaitis for the first 70 minutes but yeah we got outplayed. I expect a very bad time vs Jordan on Wednesday.
They were missing Holtmann, Rasmussen, Sato and Tabinas some of whom were replaced by old players at the last minute or were injured. The defence left Etheridge who played excellent hung out to dry. One bright spot though is the new kid from the U18 Atletico Madrid team, 17 y.o. Santi Rublico who played well at right back. He looks like a keeper and a future mainstay for this team. Otherwise the team's performance was disappointing. 🚨| Santi Rublico, an 18-year-old defender at the Atleti academy, has been called up to the senior squad of the Philippines national team. 🇵🇭🔥[@mundodeportivo] pic.twitter.com/H0qF67mcyp— Atletico Universe (@atletiuniverse) March 20, 2023 It wasn't all bad news for the Philippines yesterday though. The Men's Ice Hockey Team won over Mongolia in OT 7-6, their 2nd win(after a 14-0 rout of Indonesia) in their debut participation in the World Ice Hockey Championships Division IV. It was a good win over a cold weather nation, host and pre tournament favorite Mongolia. They will most likely rout Kuwait in their final game giving them the Div IV World Ice Hockey Championship on their first try and clinching promotion to Div III B next year.
Azkals lose yet another game. This time it is 4-0. A blowout. Starting to worry if they continue this horrible form, it will get even more difficult to attract dual nationals. Maybe more importantly, this could negatively affect the growth of the sport in the Philippines.
Great article in the NY Times on soccer in China. There could be lessons here for the Philippines. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/29/sports/soccer/china-soccer.html China’s Soccer Experiment Was a Flop. Now It May Be Over. China poured billions into its bid to become a major player in the world’s most popular sport. A decade later, it has little to show for that investment. By Tariq Panja March 29, 2023 It takes only a glance at the news coverage from those days less than a decade ago, when China’s soccer success seemed only a matter of determination and money, to remember how quickly and how deeply the country embraced the world’s most popular sport as a national project. At home and abroad, China’s president, Xi Jinping, was pictured kicking soccer balls and watching youth matches. State media detailed his lifelong love of the game. Schools were ordered to introduce soccer into their curriculums, and billions of dollars were earmarked for the construction of tens of thousands of fields. Major companies rushed to invest in professional teams, both at home and abroad, then stocked them with imported players — whatever the cost. There was talk of bringing the World Cup to China. In Beijing, there was audacious talk of winning it. Now, though, China’s great soccer dream appears to be over. The expensive recruits have gone. Top teams have disappeared with alarming regularity. The national team shows little sign of improvement. And in perhaps the most direct sign of a failed policy, some of the top officials charged with leading China’s soccer revolution have been detained amid allegations of corruption. “The hopes were really high,” said Liu Dongfeng, a professor at the school of economics and management at the Shanghai University of Sport. “And that is also why the disappointment is so big.” What derailed China’s soccer plan, when earlier state-backed bids to dominate Olympic sports had delivered regular glory and piles of medals? A global pandemic and an economic downturn didn’t help. Nor did the lack of truly world-class talents. Then there were the bad deals, the whispers of corruption and the nagging national inability to succeed in team sports. Whatever the reasons, the current malaise infecting Chinese soccer is a major reversal from the momentum that accompanied the release in 2015 of China’s 50-point plan for the sport. That program was packed with concrete targets and lofty goals. Perhaps the most eye-catching was a directive to include soccer in the national school curriculum — introducing it to tens of millions of children in a single stroke — and to set up 50,000 soccer schools in the country by 2025. Eager to support Xi’s ambitions, or perhaps just as eager to take advantage of a loosening of restrictions on the purchase of foreign assets, Chinese investors quickly opened a fire hose of money on the game. Riding the Rocket Billions of dollars went to acquiring whole or partial stakes in European soccer teams. Chinese companies signed up as FIFA sponsors and put their names on the message boards and shirts of well-known clubs. At home, some of China’s richest people and companies invested in teams with an abandon that transformed the country’s top division, the Super League, into a major player in the global transfer market. Players who once would never have considered a career in China were suddenly racing there, lured by eye-popping salaries or eight-figure transfer fees that their European and South American clubs simply couldn’t afford to pass up. .....
I often try to imagine a way for a stable league system to exist in the Philippines. It usually comes down to an American Major League Soccer-style structure where the league is single-entity. There are investors in the league who put in money for a club but in the end the ownership and contracts are in the hands of the league. The league owning the teams would probably lower the risk of clubs folding due to shoddy owners. A hard salary cap should also be enforced to prevent clubs from spending beyond their means. Maybe this wouldn't increase the level of play but it is not healthy for football in this country to continue having clubs going on hiatus or dissolving.
Some of the clubs were more adversely affected by the Covid Pandemic than others. Perennial PFL champion Ceres FC for instance which managed to qualify for the AFC Champion's League and keep many of the national team players at home folded because their ownership's business providing transportation(mostly bus services) in various provinces in the Philippines was shut down by the Pandemic when people stayed home during the lockdown.
Some good news at least on at the grassroots level from the PFF Facebook page "PFF to launch Center of Excellence and Training Areas of Development programs In a bid to reinvigorate the country’s youth development program and to identify and develop the next generation of national team players, the Philippine Football Federation is set to launch the Center of Excellence (COE) program beginning with the tryouts sessions to be held on 22 and 23 April 2023 at the PFF National Training Center in Carmona, Cavite. Both programs are under the FIFA Talent Development Scheme (TDS), a tailor-made FIFA consultancy service to Member Associations to support its long-term player development strategies. The program is also fully supported by PFF and is offered for free for all boys and girls players for Under-12 (born 2011-2012) and Under-14 (born 2009-2010) The tryout sessions will have an initial player base from National Capital Region FA, Laguna-Cavite FA, and Quezon-Batangas RFA. The sessions for players based in Visayas and Mindanao will be launched at a later date. Players selected from the tryouts will go forward to the Center of Excellence program where they will receive advanced training sessions to enhance their abilities."
Coach Rob Gier names his squad for the 32 SEA Games Most are members of the U23 ADT squad that has been competing in the Philippines Football League for the past year or so.
Update ICYMI: Over 200 Under-12 and Under-14 players went to the PFF National Training Center last Saturday and Sunday for the PFF Center of Excellence Program. The program, which is supported by the FIFA Talent Development Scheme, is run by PFF to identify up and coming talents for the Training Areas of Development (TAD) program which hopes to nurture the next crop of national team players. The tryout sessions will have an initial player base from National Capital Region FA, Laguna-Cavite FA, Rizal FA, and Quezon-Batangas RFA. The sessions for players based in Visayas and Mindanao will be launched at a later date.
How could they lose 3-0 to Timor-Leste? This has to be one of the most embarrassing losses in the last 20 years of this program. Even worse since Timor-Leste didn’t even exist 20 years ago! I understand it’s u22 and not the senior team but this is still an awful showing at such a large stage like the SEA Games. Our u22s should be able to easily dispatch the lower half of South East Asia’s u22s.
We were actually playing host Cambodia on even terms during their 1-1 draw in the first game and Cambodia dominated Timor 4-0 so the loss to Timor is totally inexplicable.
Is Gerritt Holtmann retired from the national team already? I understand he was injured during the last FIFA international break and he wouldn’t have been able to make camp, but now he didn’t even get on the roster for these upcoming friendlies. It seems like he doesn’t really care much about the Azkals. He didn’t even make any post on social media from his debut last year and hasn’t posted about the Azkals since. He’s a bench warmer on a bundesliga team that almost got relegated, I would imagine he would have savored these call ups as a chance to be the star and main focus of a national team.
We were successful vs Nepal the other day. 1-0 win with a 49th minute goal from Jarvey Gayoso. This was followed by an extremely disappointing match vs Taiwan where we blew a 2-1 lead and lost the game in the 90th minute. Yes they're friendlies and they're made for experimentation and chemistry building, but the Philippines has only won a single match all year and it was just the Nepal game. There needs to be some progress in results in the next window.
I may be wrong about this, but I think these friendlies do count towards total ranking points. As of April 6, the Philippines were ranked 136 in the world and 23 in the AFC rankings. As the world cup qualifier approaches, the bottom 22 AFC teams play in the first round while the remaining 24 teams on the top part of the table start play in the second round. The Philippines are 2 slots away from dropping to have to play in the first round. I understand this is a time to experiment and find a way to play together, but they are also in a position where they still need results. Hoping they figure this out soon.
Michael Falkesgaard has returned to Europe. He left Bangkok United on a free and signed with second division Danish club, B.93.
AFC World Cup Qualifers 2026 predictions Round 1 Afghanistan over Mongolia Bangladesh over Maldives Singapore over Guam Yemen over Sri Lanka Myanmar over Macau Cambodia over Pakistan Chinese Taipei over Timor-Leste Indonesia over Brunei Hongkong over Bhutan Nepal over Laos Round 2 Group A 1. Qatar 2. Kuwait 3. India 4. Afghanistan Group B 1. Japan 2. Syria 3. North Korea 4. Myanmar Group C 1. South Korea 2. Thailand 3. China 4. Singapore Group D 1. Oman 2. Malaysia 3. Krygyzstan 4. Chinese Taipei Group E 1. Iran 2. Uzbekistan 3. Hongkong 4. Turkmenistan Group F 1. Vietnam 2. Iraq 3. Indonesia 4. Philippines Group G 1. Saudi Arabia 2. Jordan 3. Tajikistan 4. Cambodia Group H 1. Bahrain 2. UAE 3. Nepal 4. Yemen Group I 1. Australia 2. Lebanon 3. Palestine 4. Bangladesh My picks to be eliminated after round 3 Lebanon Malaysia Kuwait Syria Oman Thailand My picks to be eliminated after round 4 Vietnam Jordan My 8 Asian teams to qualify directly for the 2026 World Cup Japan Australia Iran South Korea Saudi Arabia Uzbekistan (debutants) Bahrain (debutants) UAE My round 5 match up Iraq over Qatar Iraq go on to play the intercontinental playoffs. But I don't have them coming through that. Good luck to all Asian teams!
08 September 2023 International Friendly : Chinese Taipei 1-1 Philippines There was a time when I thought that with the trajectory of Philippines football, beating Chinese Taipei in 2023 would be as certain as the yearly rise in college tuition. The Azkals have remained stagnant for the last five to six years, at least. Something needs to change.
Azkals suffered a 0-2 defeat to Vietnam in their FIFA World Cup Asian qualifiers second round match at the Rizal Memorial Stadium in Manila. Vietnam took the lead in the 16th minute through Nguyen Van Toan and sealed the victory with a late goal from Nguyen Dinh Bac in the 94th minute. It's amazing we had 10,500 fans in attendance, but it's disheartening that once again, the home crowd witnessed another loss. Hopefully we can turn things around against the Indonesians.
The Azkals and Indonesia ended their FIFA World Cup 2026 AFC Second Round Group F qualifying match on November 21, 2023, with a 1-1 draw at the Rizal Memorial Stadium in Manila, Philippines. Patrick Reichelt found the net first at the 23rd minute, but Saddil Ramdani from Indonesia equalized at the 70th. Unfortunately, the Azkals couldn't stay solid the entire game and we had to settle with a point. Starting the series with a home loss and a draw doesn't paint a favorable picture for us in this round of the World Cup Qualifiers.