THE elections are still nine months away and the campaign period hasn’t officially started—though you wouldn’t know that if you watch TV. This early, Yayoy and Atan are getting it on.
Yayoy is Raul Alscoseba, the Sto. Niño toting coach of the Cebu Niños and the guy in charge of boxing at the Cebu City Sports Commission (CCSC).
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OSCAR dela Hoya, for all the questions regarding his fading skills in his last years as an active boxer, is one astute promoter.
While everyone thinks that everything that can be done to promote a card—staged press con brawls to short reality TVish shows—has been done, dela Hoya, the owner of Golden Boy Promotions, has discovered a novelty.
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There are a couple of coming tournaments.
The ECCP festival this weekend at CIS and the USP cup on June 20 and 21.
Have fun!
Photographers covering the Aboitiz Cup in the new Aboitiz Sports Field were made to pay P40.
Now, I’ve heard from the grapevine, one paper will boycott the Aboitiz Cup, as for us?….
I was quited surprised when I got the scores of some of the girls football matches in the Milo Little Olympics, so the next day, I checked them out. The team is good, and it’s better that they are now playing for their school.
Here’s an article from Sun.Star Cebu last Monday. http://sunstar.com.ph/static/ceb/2008/09/08/sports/stc.girls.football.team.makes.finals.in.first.try.html
FOR a school that teaches girls to be feminine and conservative, it was a pleasant surprise to see a bunch of high school girls from St. Theresa’s College play rough and tough in the football field at the Cebu City Sports Center in the 13th Milo Little Olympics.
This may be the first time in Milo Little Olympics history that STC allowed its students to take part, but the team sent a clear message that nobody can push them around because they sure can push back.
http://sunstar.com.ph/static/ceb/2008/09/12/sports/209.teams.sign.up.for.third.mizuno.cup.html
A HEFTY crowd of football players will congregate in the two-day football 3rd Mizuno Football Fiesta which will kickoff on Sept. 13 and 14 at the University of San Carlos-Technology Center football grounds.
This year’s installment of the Mizuno football festival has attracted 209 teams from different clubs and schools in Cebu City and three from San Carlos City and a lady team from Bacolod.
“This year’s tournament is much bigger than last year’s tournament. Last year’s participants were about 160 to 170 teams,” said Don Bosco United Football Club’s Jim Karl Akiatan, one of the organizers of the Mizuno tournament.
This tournament will showcase 11 categories – Players 6, Players 8, Players 10, Boys 12, Girls 12, Boys 14, Girls 14, Boys 17, Girls 17, Ladies Open, Men’s Open and the 38 and above categories.
The only thing missing in this year’s tournament is the 19-under division which was eliminated due to the scarcity of teams in that age bracket.
On the first day, there will be a formal opening at 7 a.m. followed by the games of the Players 6 to 10, Boys and Girls 12, 14, and Girls 17 categories while the Ladies Open, 38 and above and the much awaited Men’s Open, in which 44 teams are competing against each other, will be on the following day.
The champions of the contest will be receiving a trophy and individual medals while the 1st runner-ups will be given individual medals.
This football festival is sponsored by Mizuno and organized by Akiatan and Dexter Arrojado of Queen City United. (EKA)
(from http://sunstar.com.ph/static/ceb/2008/09/10/sports/limpag.spare.the.kids.html)
ALAS sais na is one of the most unique phrases of encouragement or slogans in local sports and is a signature call of Francis Ramirez and the Abellana National School (ANS) boys.
“It means to hustle,” Ramirez once explained to me while I was still handling the football beat.
At the Cebu City Sports Center, ANS is only allowed to practice until 6 p.m., before the bulk of the joggers take to the oval for their nightly exercise ritual.
A bunch of boys, football, and joggers don’t mix, hence the 6 p.m. limit.
Alais sais na means to give everything before the final whistle.
And ANS players, like most of the top teams in Cebu, do give their all in the crucial stretch.
However, for the rest of the year, ANS will have no need to hustle anymore after the team, and their coach, was ordered suspended by Mayor Tomas Osmeña for not asking permission from the Department of Education when they joined the Philippine Olympic Festival and for representing Cebu Province.
Ramirez and the ANS principal has since admitted their mistake, though I think the coach was quite creative in explaining the oversight—he couldn’t have known on the eve of the event that he was to represent Cebu Province when the team already had Ciudad de Cebu as its sponsor—he did right by asking that the kids be spared from the suspension.
Kids shouldn’t suffer for other people’s mistakes.
Players play where the coach tells them to play, even more footballers. With the lack of tournaments, the question footballers ask is “why are we not playing in this tournament?” and not “why are we playing?”
ANS will miss the Cebu City Olympics and with that, any dreams of Cebu—not just the city—winning the secondary title in the Palarong Pambansa is dented.
Even if ANS won’t win the Cebu City OIympics title, some of the players are virtual shoo-ins as reinforcements for the champion.
Unless a team is from Barotac, no reinforcement-free school has the chance to win the Palarong Pambansa title. But with ANS’ suspension, the pool of players the Cebu City champion team gets to choose just got a little bit shallower.
The bigwigs at DepEd Cebu City, instead of showing up only in the opening ceremonies of sporting events to give their speeches—which nobody really listens to save for reporters—should show up in championship matches to see first hand what drives athletes like ANS to go that extra mile after a simple phrase like, “Alas sais na!”
Ramirez’s suspension also puts the Cebu Football Association in an interesting position, not one any organization would envy.
The suspension was only for DepEd-sanctioned meets, and since the Cebu City Olympics and the Milo Olympics, have never recognized its authority, CebuFA could not honor that suspension.
Or it could show leniency by allowing the players, but not the coach, to play in their tournaments.
But that means going against Mayor Tomas Osmeña.
And that isn’t something a group of private individuals can take lightly.
***
In case you are wondering what I am doing in these pages, I regret to inform you, that, I’d be here regularly from now on. (Feel free to embellish—or enhance if you will—the picture, my preferred add-ons are a pirate’s eye patch and a curling pencil moustache.)
Thanks to Atty. Pachico A. Seares, the Editor-in-Chief of the paper, for allowing me to join noted columnists John Z. Pages, (he digs Maria Sharapova too) Jingo Quijano (a lawyer with a great right hook, deadly combination), Karlon N. Rama, Edgar Chiongbian, Boy Pestaño and Noel S. Villaflor (If he ever finds his way back to a PC and resume his column).
(mikelimpag@gmail.com)
We’ve all been caught in a traffic jam, once or twice a day, and wished why won’t anybody obey the rules of the road? Why can’t red mean stop once in awhile.
We’ve all had our say, and sometimes, we took that just little bit of leeway to gain an inch, deny another motorist. Or sometimes, we cheered while the driver finally decided to beat the red light, or drive the opposite lane (I know I did).
We’ve had our say.
We’ve all been in this situation before. Once or twice a tournament, we curse the imbeciles of our FAs. They should do this, they should do that. Why are they doing that?
We’ve had our say.
Now is the time to “have our act.”
It’s called The Project.
Donate. Give. Act. Do.
Whatever you can.
It’s not simply about money. I don’t have any. You’ve got books, DVDs, used spikes, magazines—anything football.
If you don’t have any of these, don’t fret. If you’re good with computer skills, go check out all the Philippine football videos at youtube, edit it, put it in one DVD. Some kid in a barrio not far away will see that video and promise to himself, “Someday, I will be in that video.”
This is about DOING something.
If you don’t have such skills, fret no more, go tell your friends, spread the news.
Act. Do.
For when the time comes when you get asked what have you done for Philippine football, at least…saying you’ve answered all questions, posts in anything related to Philippine football in all the internet forums won’t be the first thing in your mind.
After a year’s absence, the Aboitiz Cup will be back, or so said the new CebuFA board.
Good news is, the new board will retain the two divisions for the Men’s Open, while there will be new age groups for Girls Football.
Now the question is, with the recent reshuffling of the teams in the Men’s Open, how will they determine which one gets to play in which division?
Also, this year, the CebuFA will finally take on the registration of individuals for its database.
But this P100 per head is sure going to raise a lot of questions (at least I will).
I may be wrong but there could be at least, a thousand players (more if we consider all the individuals involved in football) in Cebu where does the money go?
As to these database. I’m not such a big fan with how the CebuFA handled the data in their first tournament (Yes the Inter Club was officially a Queen City-organized event, but it still WAS a CebuFA event), will this new database be anything different?
Will these be just scraps or pieces of papers, tucked in a folder and left to rot until the next registration phase? Or
will this be a real database, where anyone who wants to question that “data of a certain player or individual” can access?
We’ll see.
And finally. I asked Richard whether the CebuFA will ever consider putting up a website, they said yes. I hope that happens sooner rather than later.
Putting this database on the CebuFA website, which anyone can access, sounds like a swell idea don’t you think?
I’ll jump the gun.
PFF president Mari Martinez has abandoned his plan to change the moniker Azkals, but upon reading the story of how the team got its name, he said, “That guy again!” when he got to the bottom part.
To quote Alain at pinoysoccer.com, “And from what I’ve heard, Martinez is still fuming about the April fools joke.”
Coach Norman won’t be back at the team, tired as he is with all the interference. The PFF will finally put its own website, (I’m curious what news will be in that site.) For a change, the Pinoys will travel to England to train with the Fil-Brits and as to the brouhaha about Phil Younghusband’s failed signing with the LA Galaxy, well with David Beckham getting the lion share of the payroll, someone else is bound to get the ant’s share–no, the parasite of the ant’s share–of the payroll. 287 dollars a week to play football?
And oh, the pinoysoccer.com community share the same idea with the PFF president with regards to a certain bald guy, at least, when no one else is listening. The words used were, “He’s very difficult to deal with.”
Catch all the details at pinoysoccer.com.
