Football is a religion around the world, uniting 90 percent of the countries around the world,” exclaimed Alen Stajcic, the much-celebrated coach of our women’s national football team. A debutant in this year’s World Cup, the Philippines managed to upset one of the co-hosts, New Zealand, in one of the most nerve-wracking yet thrilling sports events of the year yet.
The joy was inexplicable. Not only in the Sky Stadium in Wellington, where tens of thousands of Filipinos were drenched in ecstatic triumph, but also across numerous malls, which provided free broadcast of the much-anticipated match before huge cheering crowds. Our beloved “Malditas” have already made history.
What we are witnessing is not only a renaissance in women’s football, which has captured the hearts of millions of new fans in recent years but also potentially a new golden era in Philippine football.
Our spectacular performance, however, also had another historic relevance: It’s a perfect homage to unquestionably the greatest Asian footballer of all-time: the Iloilo-born Paulino Alcantara, whose legendary status at Barcelona F.C., his home club for more than a decade, was only matched by Lionel Messi, the greatest footballer of all time.
Given the sheer force of his sporting success, Alcantara should have been a household name in the Philippines even a century after his storied career. But as coach Stajcic explains, “Probably my country Australia, the Philippines, and New Zealand are three other countries in the world where football is not number one.”
If it’s cricket or rugby for the likes of Australia and New Zealand, it’s undoubtedly basketball that reigns supreme in the Philippines. The ascent of basketball as the king of sports in our country is a testament to the power of American colonial influence, which radically altered not only our national habits but also our overall trajectory as a nation-state over the past century.
But the relative poverty of football fandom in the Philippines is also a reflection of a package of deep-seated misconceptions, which have prevented us from excelling in the world’s most important sport years or decades earlier.
The greatest myth about football is that it’s a sport for the elite, namely for nations with proper city-planning and recreational parks. While it’s true that logistics is a big element in professional football, anyone with an inkling of world knowledge would have noticed that the best players on earth often hail from the slums of developing countries such as Brazil.
In fact, all you need to play football are a pair of rocks or the crude outlines of a goalpost chalked onto any wall. Plus, of course, some improvised ball, which can come in many inexpensive shapes and forms. This is why all over Africa, Latin America, and Asia, billions of children have enjoyed the sheer magic of the “beautiful game” in tight alleys, rough roads, and across open fields or on the ruins of old industrial plants.
Football is the perfect equalizer. Not only you don’t have to spend for a basketball ring, but, even more importantly, there are no height requirements. Messi, the greatest player of all time, is way shorter than even the shortest point guards in top basketball leagues, who are often as tall as football goalkeepers.
In the latest World Cup, three out of the top four nations were from either the developing world (Argentina and Morocco) or a post-conflict background (i.e., Croatia). As for France, it heavily relied on players of immigrant backgrounds, many of whom grew up in humble neighborhoods.
And this brings us to the legacy of Paulino Alcantara, who scored 395 goals in 399 games before he was finally overtaken by Messi as Barcelona’s most-decorated player. As the Barcelona website page put it, here was “the man from the Philippines,” who “hit a shot so hard that it ripped right through the net” during a big match against France.
Standing at only 170 centimeters, he was a net-breaker a la Captain Tsubasa! During his era, our national football team dismantled Asian giants such as Japan, sealing the Philippines’ place as one of the continent’s superpowers. Instead of an ephemeral memory of a golden past, Alcantara’s inimitable legacy should inspire the revival of the “beautiful game” for the Filipino nation. Our “Malditas,” now known as Filipinas, and their amazing journey beckon a new golden era for Philippine football.
rheydarian@inquirer.com.ph