They had more possession which you would expect with the opposition being down to 10 men for almost an hour but didn't do much with it. It was largely a disjointed performance and they were playing like Singapore had 11 players! lol. They kept going through the middle and more often than not Singapore were able to deal with that tactic quite easily. The only real chances fell to Minegishi, three of them. Apart from that, they didn't really do squat! Overall a very scrappy and frustrating game to watch. They'd be lucky to get a draw against Indonesia and then get an absolute hiding from Thailand!
Bright point for the Azkals in the game is the smashing debut of Hikaru Minegishi. He only played in the second half, but immediately made his presence felt, creating chances and nearly scored himself a few times on as was mentioned before 3 glorious attempts that unfortunately fell just short of getting through. Looking forward, it looks like he will be a mainstay on the team for years to come. He won the Golden Ball in the UFL this season for scoring 18 goals and creating chances for his club Global FC and at one point scored 17 goals in 17 league matches.
Dooley just signed a 2 yr contract. Not sure if the contract has a clause where he could be fired without being due the rest of his contract. If that is not the cause, I doubt that they will let him go. One thing about Dooley though, he is not afraid of playing local players in their first game in a key position in an important match, if he thinks they are ready, as he did with 17 y/o Marco Casambre when he started him at centerback against Thailand and acquitted himself well. It was when he was replaced that the Thais scored their lone goal. http://sports.inquirer.net/230706/dooley-pleased-with-casambres-performance-as-starter#ixzz4R3GtPFC6 Along with 21 y/o fellow native Amani Aguinaldo, that is a potential centerback duo, that if they develop further can man the Azkals backline for years to come. Marco received a lot of good reviews from pundits back home in his first match for the Azkals. Those 2 are good examples of what a domestic professional league can do in terms of developing domestic players for potential national team duty. EVille, I think you favored Tacusalme over Casambre on the roster, but it seems that Dooley had valid reason to call Marco Casambre for this tournament despite being only 17 y/o as he has shown in practice that he will not back down against his more experienced teammates on defence. I am not surprised at this, as being a centerback himself with World Cup and Bundesliga experience, Dooley knows what to look for in players in that position and can help develop them.
The Philippines did not qualify for the semis of the Suzuki Cup(after circumstances forced them to lose up to 8 players most of whom were starters from their WC qualifying roster), but the bright lining is that they introduced a lot of young players to the national team. They only had 2 players in the team who are in their 30's(Schrock and James Younghusband), both of whom just turned 30. The rest are in their 20's or younger, and after trying out several players to partner 21 y/o Aguinaldo at centerback, they seem to have found an answer in 17 y/o centerback Casambre, who had a good performance against powerhouse Thailand. They remained competitive throughout the tournament and showed that that they can hold their own against the more experienced and older teams in Grp A. I think they will be okay when Asian Cup qualifying starts(when many of their missing players will hopefully become available) and their long term prospects also look promising.
I doubt that Dooley will get sacked, whether because of the time he still has left on his contract or what not but that's besides the point because I think he should be! I'll give Dooley credit for the having the balls to make the type of decisions he does but there's barely any logic in them. Dooley may have come out and praised Casambre but what do you expect him to say? That he was utter dog sh!t? It looks like you didn't even watch the game and you're just going along with what's being said! Casambre was out of his depth! Just because a goal wasn't conceded when he was on the pitch doesn't mean he "acquitted himself well". Aguinaldo and even Muller had to save his ass numerous times! Even Dooley contradicts himself! He praises him but during the game he took him off when he wasn't even injured and no goals were conceded yet. Hilarious stuff! Casambre getting good reviews from local so called "pundits" doesn't really say anything! These "pundits" barely know f-all! I'm sure one of those is Bob Guerrero. He's one of those that has a track record for overrating a lot of players, specifically local ones. I don't need these "pundits" to tell me what to think. I saw the game and he was out of his depth! End of. Aguinaldo himself is still very raw. He's practically all brawn and needs to get a brain! He still has a lot to learn! Casambre ironically is a LB not a CB!! You're also overrating Dooley a lot!! Me saying that he should be sacked isn't only because of his random decision to play Casambre which it looks like you're making it out to be. I've said it since earlier in the year, Dooley has lost the plot! Doesn't seem to know what system to use, has permanently converted a hand full of players (key players) to completely different positions and constantly makes dodgy call-ups and match day selections. It's turned into a frickin circus which has culminated into the NT getting dumped out at the group stage at the Suzuki Cup on home soil!
First of all, I am not overrating Dooley. I acknowledge his limitations. He wasn't my first choice for replacing Weiss. It was actually former Thailand coach Winfred Schaefer who's winning record speaks for itself and who actually personally applied for the Philippine national team coaching job. They just couldn't afford him. Considering their budget, Dooley seems to be a reasonable choice despite his lack of experience. I also have occasional problems in Dooley's roster choices, team formations and using players out of their normal positions(specifically P Younghusband for this tournament). But he is still a lot better than the tactically naive former Philippine national team coach Weiss or inexperienced McMenemy in my opinion. Considering the caliber of inexperienced coaches they have hired and their inability to hire better ones because of their budget, Dooley doesn't look like a bad choice. You need to lower your expectations and be realistic about our budget my friend, unless of course you are willing to provide the funds to get a more experienced coach. As for Casambre, it wasn't only Guerrero who praised him. Positive reviews also came from other analysts(including coaches) and media personnel as well. I think Dooley replaced him in the 70th minute with midfielder Ingreso, because they needed to score a goal.
The below piece is written by Roy Moore, former English host of GMA's For The Win football edition. He totally echoes my sentiments ... Also, Mike Limpag tweeted recently that the Philippines dilemma is that the infrastructure is in Manila but the fan support is in the provinces ... but check out Roy's piece first: "It was supposed to be a dream. Now it’s more like a nightmare for Philippine football. The Philippines failed to qualify for the Semi Finals of the Suzuki Cup for the first time since 2008 despite hosting the Group. With pitiful attendances there’s a lot to think about, with it now unlikely we’ll be hosting another Suzuki Cup Group for a long time. So, as I wrote in a four part series on GMA nearly two years ago, the Azkals have hit a ceiling and grassroots are the only way to break it. We’ve Been Spoiled For the last three editions of the Suzuki Cup, Azkals fans have arguably been spoiled. The miracle in Hanoi, 2010, was both unexpected and deserved. A mess of an administration at the time stole the home game. The Philippines repeated the success in 2012 against a weakened Vietnam but Singapore edged a dull Semi Final. And in 2014 strong wins over Laos and an Indonesian team in disarray (FIFA banned them soon after) allowed comfortable qualification. Humbled by Vietnam in the last group game and by Thailand in the Semis, the Azkals saw the ceiling. This is the level the team have been at for around 4 years now. The players, the coaches, the management have all done wonders to get this far in such a short amount of time. But we cannot get better with what we’re doing right now. This is as good as it gets. Post-Mortem After losing to Thailand again, Coach Thomas Dooley gave this sound assessment: “We couldn’t score… that was bad.” To be fair, I actually think Dooley has done a very good job overall and he was right to commend the effort of the players. They pressed high and forced Thailand’s hand. But for a couple of great saves and a bit more luck, the Azkals could have nicked it. They really gave it a go. In hindsight, it seems easy to say why the Philippines fell at this hurdle. With the Azkals’ top scorer played as a holding midfielder, and without a natural striker to replace him, the Philippines scored just two goals in three games, both from free-kicks. Juani, Gier, Lucena and others retired after the 2014 edition leaving only one natural defender in the back four for the first two games and as many as six of the starting eleven out of position overall. There were no ready, tested replacements waiting in the wings. Now Marco Casambre, making his debut at 17 years old, did exceptionally well. I’d buy him a beer if he weren’t underage it’s that ridiculous how young this kid is. But for all the positives of his performance, that he was thrown into a do or die game against the best team in Southeast Asia for his international debut speaks to the utter lack of depth in the squad. But it’s also not quite that simple. If Indonesia hadn’t scored a late winner against Singapore, the Philippines would have gone through. If the Azkals had nicked a late goal against Singapore themselves, they would have gone through. With just a bit more luck in any of those games, the Azkals would have gone through. There are plenty of ifs, buts, and maybes. A Puddle Not a Pool But we have to accept that this is the Azkals’ level. The management, Palami et al, have done wonders to raise the bar of the team to this level in such a short amount of time, but this is as far as the team can go without broader support. Before the Suzuki Cup started, more than a few Philippine football writers and coaches were saying getting to the Semis again would be tough. These guys (and girls) support their country, support the team, they know how hard the Azkals management and players work… and they also know the limitations of Philippine football. For all the positives we know this for sure: the Azkals don’t have so much of a pool of players as a tiny puddle. The Azkals aren’t meant to be a team feeding the rest of the pyramid. They’re meant to be fed by the pyramid, supported by a competent structure of domestic football at youth and senior level. There’s no way to progress otherwise. After the game Dooley said “It’s disappointing and we have to move on.” He’s right, but we need to talk about what the team moves on to. These players go back to a National League with nothing nailed down just 4 months before kick off. In an interview two years ago the PFF said they were pinning their grassroots hopes on the National League so serious grassroots efforts have been delayed. So many people in the Philippine game are saying it… and now some random white guy with a blog is saying it again. The result is that the typical kid in the typical barangay still can’t play football (more in Part 2). The Grassroots Aren’t Growing Against most teams in Southeast Asia, the Azkals hold their own. But after six years there have been enough birthing pains, enough growing pains, and enough excuses. Every football expert sent by FIFA, every Head Coach of the National Team, and every grassroots coordinator/adviser has said the same thing. Every time the response is: ‘Thank you for your contribution’ and nothing changes. Everyone complains about the same things year after year. Whether they’re a tiny club in the middle of a slum or part of AFC and FIFA. So many people, from National Youth Team Coaches to grassroots and community coaches, are working incredibly hard… but they’re being let down. And this is why there’s no market for the National League yet. National Leagues worked in the USA, Japan, and Australia because they were bottom up. There were hundreds of thousands of kids playing before a League took off. If you sell a ticket to a kid, you sell tickets to theit parents too. Right now, if 2,000 to 5,000 people show up for the Azkals, just a few hundred at UFL games, how many more do we expect to watch the same players? Not enough to justify professional contracts in a 10-game season, that’s for sure. If we had invested in a grassroots structure beyond one day festivals (see Part 2) we would be seeing the results. We would see new people watching games because they play. We would see higher turnouts for UFL matches. We may not see different results with the Azkals yet, but we would certainly see better results with National Youth teams. Last year Bob Guerrero pointed out that the Philippine Youth Teams played 18 games and lost 17. I am very much interested to see what the record is in 2016. We need to take the long-term approach or we move from one crisis to another. The defence rests on 21 year old Amani’s shoulders. And do we have any idea who could replace Phil Younghusband or Misagh (29 years old) or James and Schrock (30)? The Azkals management has gotten us this far… but they’re not supposed to have to plug all the gaps. That’s the job of Philippine football as a whole. And that’s both the bad news and the good news. We have serious issues. Everybody knows it. But with targeted development, a vision and strategy, it is possible to revive Philippine football to an even better place. To develop a genuine football pyramid and break that ceiling." And that will be Part 2: Reviving Philippine Football
I follow the twitter accounts closely too to get a feel for what the fans, media and players are thinking and feeling ... and Javier Patino is getting roasted by some fans and some media for being absent again. Reading Javi's tweets, he is desperately defending himself.
As much as I hate it, we have no budget for football. So, we do the best we can with what we've got ... and we don't have much. Dooley would've been sacked already in a real football country, but since it's the clueless Philippines, he still has his job, and he will still continue to tinker with the players and lineups. That backline is way too young, and he needed to mix it up with some veteran professionals. Too bad our defenders from the last several years have all retired. I for one would have loved to see Alvaro Silva and his experience manning the defense. I followed Alvaro's social media accounts as well, and I believe he purposely played in South Korea and even tried out for an Indonesian club in the hopes of catching the attention of the national team again. He's back playing in the 2nd Division in Spain right now. The national team keeps getting stuck with these coaches whose only real experiences are training kids ... and that's the end product on the pitch.
Suzuki Cup 2016 was embarrassing because the Philippines failed both on and off the pitch. AFC I hope you realized this: MANILA IS A BLACK HOLE FOR FOOTBALL
Mike T Limpag, sports writer for Sunstar Cebu: "Phil football dilemma. Infrastructure in Manila, fan support in provinces."
Thanks to the poor hosting of the Suzuki Cup and subpar performance of the Philippines, football in this country has taken, as the cliche goes, "One step forward, two steps back."
I watched Dooley's interview after the Thailand match, and he appeared very calm. He went on to say that they need to move on with a smile on his face. In my head I was thinking that he was probably smiling because he still has his job since the PFF have no options at all. What ********in' coach would throw in a 17-year-old with no international experience on defense with the score level at 0-0 with about 10 minutes left in a do-or-die game? I'm still reeling about this! Italian coach Enzo Bearzot played 18-year-old Giuseppe Bergomi in the back during the 1982 World Cup Final, but Bergomi, who would later go on to become Italy's captain, already had the previous matches under his belt, so he was settled in already. I know it's a bad comparison, but it's the only thing that came to mind. Yeah, I know. We're talking about Dooley here. Dooley either gets his shit back together or we're ********in' screwed. We have nobody. Some ********in' idiot on Twitter, who probably knows nothing about football, is trying to get people to say that Chieffy Caligdong should be the next coach. What? As a player, he was good technically, but he was tactically clueless. Always running around like a chicken with his head cut off, as they say. I'm Ilonggo, but no way, Chieffy! His play-by-play on the telly is enough to make you move out of the country. What more if he was head coach? He's already on the coaching staff, so this is scary enough. I just can't keep thinking about how this Suzuki Cup is a total failure. I'm upset that the PFF still went along with hosting it, knowing no one was going to go all the way out to Bulacan to watch those matches. They should've backed out and let another country take over. I was reading the Straits Times of Singapore, and they reported less than 500 people attended the match between Thailand and Singapore. Do you know what 500 people look like in a 20,000-seat stadium? These are 2 former champions that would've sold out a stadium in a real football country. Don't ever hold a tournament of this magnitude again in the Philippines! ... EVER
My error. Casambre played most of the match and was subbed out with about 10 minutes left, from what I remember watching. I guess it sounds more dramatic being subbed in to that position with 10 minutes remaining? I have a lot of complaints about this abysmal failure called Suzuki Cup 2016, so apologies for the error.
Eville. It seems that you found another local player to criticize. First it was Aguinaldo. Now it is Casambre. It seems none of them can ever live up to your expectations. As it turns out however, to everyone's surprise, it is not the defence that failed in this tournament. It was our inability to score. They didn't really deserve to advance after just scoring 2 goals in 3 games. Fortunately with regards to the defence, we have a possible long term answer at centerback in 23 y/o Jesper Nyholm. He will be playing in the top tier Swedish Allsvenkan next year with AIK, and has showed a lot of interest in eventually playing for the Philippines. This is assuming of course that he doesn't get called up by the Swedish national team in the meantime which he is still harboring hopes for at this point in time. Iloilo 1896, as for Chieffy, I don't really know how he got a job as assistant coach. I totally agree with you on his performance as a player. I remember describing him just like you did, running around like a chicken whose head was cut off. Apparently he had good technique which allowed him to score a lot of his goals, but you need to be tactically astute if you want to be a coach, and that was not one of his strengths as a player.
Reposting my assessment from the Suzuki Cup thread, I don't really have much positive to say for the Philippines hosting of the Suzuki Cup. Their performance on and off the field was abysmal. They made the semifinals of the Suzuki Cup while playing away 3 straight times since 2010, even with players missing for various reasons. It is ironic that it is when they eventually got the opportunity to host a group stage that they failed to advance. Off the field, the PFF also did not take advantage of this opportunity by properly marketing and promoting the event, as the attendance was extremely disappointing. All I can say, is that unless football becomes more relevant in the Philippines and the PFF proves that they can do a better job organizing events, they don't really deserve to host a tournament like this again.
So far 5 clubs have submitted and been accepted by the PFF in the maiden season of the national based Professional Football League next year. The minimum is 6 apparently but more applications are being processed. http://news.abs-cbn.com/sports/11/29/16/5-clubs-sign-up-for-new-ph-football-league
In response to the talk about TV pundits and so-called football journalists, this the Philippines. Cheezy is what makes Philippines entertainment. You're never going to get rid of this. As much a fan girl Bob Guerrero is, I admit I like his telecasts because he makes it exciting to watch with his personality. He may not be the most knowledgeable, but for the casual ... and clueless ... Filipino watching football, Bob does the job. It's the Philippines, man. This cheeziness is also common in Latin America ... but they just happen to be light years ahead of us in football culture. Darren Hartmann is someone I like on the telecasts a lot because of the articulate way in which he presents the matches. He's typically British. I like him and Bob together a lot. And as for the local news writers like Limpag, I'm just happy he's an avid fan. So, I don't mind these guys. It's the Philippines. If you can accept the cheezy culture, which permeates every day life, than it becomes easier to swallow all the nonsense. But I still feel the PFF totally embarrassed not only the Philippines, but the Suzuki Cup tournament and Southeast Asia with its extremely poor handling of this tournament. PFF ... you totally screwed this whole thing up.
After the Suzuki Cup fiasco, I am a bit concerned about how they will handle and organize the maiden season of the Philippine Professional Football League next year. I have heard though that both FIFA and the AFC are helping them finance and organize this national based tournament where most teams will be based in the provinces, so maybe it won't be so bad. You must understand that left on their own the PFF has never been able to organize a successful and sustainable year round professional football league in the past. The UFL only succeeded because a bunch of succesful businessmen who where football enthusiasts as well, took it upon themselves to organize a Manila based year round semi pro tournment that provided a venue for clubs to succeed. Now that those clubs have dispersed to the provinces and the cost of holding a national based entirely professional league have escalated, the stakes are much higher. Hopefully with the help of FIFA and the AFC, it can be professionally managed so that it can be successful long term. As for telecasts, since I am based in the US, I never get to see the Philippine telecasts most of the time, as I don't suscribe to Filipino cable channels like ABS CBN here in the US. I usually just get the AFC or AFF feed when I am able, which doesn't always have commentary and which sometimes conflict with my work hours here in the US. From the ones I have been able to catch in the past though, I also enjoyed Darren Hartmann's commentary, as just like the US soccer telecasts, there is just something about hearing a knowledgable long time British commentator like Ian Darke(who was the voice of the English Premeir League before moving to ESPN) with their cool English accent call football games on TV.
I have no idea how they're going to make this league succeed after what happened in the Suzuki Cup. Yes, the PFF must rely on external sources to help push this new project along. But there must be balance. The PFF must do the football part, the businessmen involved must do the business part. And, yes I agree with you that the UFL got lucky with its support because the money people attached to the league just happened to be football fans. I don't know where to start with this one, simply because the PFF has a history of botching things up--like recently. And if you are correct about FIFA and the AFC assisting this new "professional" league, then maybe there is a slight bit of hope for us true football fans.
On a much brighter note, I have been following Alphonse Areola very closely since 2013, and it makes me proud knowing he's Filipino. The kid is well on his way to becoming a huge football star and not some guy who is just good enough to get in the lineup. I mean this kid is seriously going to be a real superstar in the world game. I'm so happy for him. My biggest wish for Alphonse: Barcelona sign him. If he continues his current form between the sticks, this could actually become a reality. Because Barca have already expressed interest in signing him. And it helps to have that historical connection with him being Filipino. I know that Barca recognize that. When Alphonse was introduced as a Villarreal player last year, there is video of the emcee telling him that he could come up and say whatever he needs to say in Spanish, French or "Filipino." So, they know over there. I'm convinced that the Spaniards see him as Filipino, which I feel helps him greatly in starting an intimate relationship with the country. Plus, there is a good-sized Filipino community there to support him. Crossing my fingers he signs with Barca in the near future.