Philippine football has come a long way

(Part 1)

The whole world this year will once again be focused on the “beautiful game,” as the World Cup will be played in the three countries of North America, i.e., the US, Canada, and Mexico.

This will be the largest and most ambitious World Cup in history. The matches will be played from June 11 to July 19. This is the first World Cup hosted by three countries and the first in North America since 1994 (when it was hosted by the USA). From 32 teams in 2022, the Cup has expanded to 48. Total matches will be 108, from 64.

There will be a new tournament structure with 12 groups of four teams each; the top two teams per group and best third-place teams advance and the eight best teams advance. The new knockout stage starts with Round 32. The new structure ensures more countries can participate; there will be more games to delight the fans; and there will be greater global participation.

There will be a total of 16 host cities across the three countries, with 11 in the US, three in Mexico, and two in Canada. The first Group Stage will be from June 11 to 27 and the last one will end on July 19 in New York and New Jersey.

As regards qualifications, the hosts (the USA, Canada, and Mexico) qualify automatically. A partial list of the other qualified teams includes Argentina (the defending champion). Brazil, France, Germany, Japan, and Morocco.

Among the most common speculations are whether or not Argentina can defend their title (with or without Lionel Messi); if the USA will perform strongly in its home base; and if there will be surprises from Asia and Africa, as many more of their teams have qualified. Unfortunately, our Men’s team failed to qualify in contrast with the Filipinas who are qualifying for the Women’s World Club next year in Brazil.

The 2026 World Cup is historic because it significantly expands football’s global reach; it brings the World Cup back to North America after 32 years; it tests a new mega-scale tournament format; and it will surely permanently reshape international football. Clearly, the 2026 World Cup is not just bigger, rather, it is fundamentally different because it combines a new competitive format, a continental-scale model, and is expected to have a massive commercial and cultural impact. If successful, World Cup 2026 could become the template for future World Cups.

FOOTBALL IN THE PHILiPPINES
The holding of the World Cup this year has once more awakened my interest in promoting football as a major sport in the Philippines.

Ten years ago I edited a compilation of articles by football enthusiasts that was entitled The Past and Future of Philippine Football, encouraged by my close friend, Mariano (Nonong) Araneta who was then the President of the Philippine Football Federation. Nonong has since risen to the level of international football and is now considered as one of the most influential Asians in global football. He is a member of the FIFA Council, which is the main decision-making body of FIFA (Fédération Internationale de Football Association) between Congresses. Nonong, therefore, represents the whole of Asia in this elite group, which shapes global football policy, competitions, and governance. At the ASEAN level, he is the President of the ASEAN Football Federation (AFF) which governs football in Southeast Asia. Through him, the Philippines has an unusually strong voice in international football governance.

The rise of Nonong to his present positions coincided with the remarkable progress that Philippine football has achieved over the last 10 years. While Philippine football has not yet broken into Asia’s elite, there have been notable achievements across men’s, women’s, and youth football. For one, the Philippine men’s national football team, called the Azkals until 2024, maintained a respectable standing in Southeast Asia. The team has consistently qualified for the AFC Asian Cup qualifiers. They have performed competitively against well established and stronger Asian teams like the Japan national football team and that of South Korea. In training their players, the coaches give high importance to the team’s standing with respect to their peers in the ASEAN, focusing on the development of younger players alongside veterans like Stephen Schrock and Neil Etheridge.

THE WOMEN’S NATIONAL TEAM
What can be considered the really outstanding breakthrough in Philippine football is the historic rise of the Women’s National Team. The Philippines women’s national football team — now relabeled as the “Filipinas” — qualified for the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup, their first ever. They achieved a 1-0 win over New Zealand women’s national football team, the co-hosts. This was the first ever World Cup win by any Philippine Football team (men’s or women’s). Before that in 2022, the AFF Women’s Championship was won by the Philippines, beating Thailand women’s football team in the final. In 2019, the women’s team won bronze in the 2019 Southeast Asian.

The domestic league is expanding with new members like the United City FC and the Kaya FC-Iloilo. Philippine clubs are beginning to appear regularly in the AFC Champions League and the AFC Cup. United City FC even reached the group stage of the AFC Champions League, a milestone for Philippine clubs.

What is really very promising for the future of Philippine football is the increased investment in youth academies and school football. More Filipino players are training abroad (especially in Europe and the US), following the example of Sandro Reyes who now plays for the Philippine national team but trained in the famous La Masia de Can Planes, FC Barcelona’s youth academy, where the arguably greatest football player alive, Lionel Messi, trained.

As the current President of the Philippine Football Federation — John Gutierrez, a former national football player himself — told me in a recent conversation, he is sure that the Philippines will be a force in global football in the not-too-distant future because of our demographic dividend. Fifty percent of our population is less than 26 years old. The leading football nations of the world today — Spain, Portugal, Germany, and the UK — have very low fertility rates and are ageing very fast. They no longer have the “raw materials” to train future football players even if they have the funds or the technology to do so. As long as our own leaders in both the government and private sector are conscious of investing in the training of football players, we can produce the future Messis, Ronaldhinos, and, why not, the future Paulino Alcantaras (the Fil-Spanish player for FC Barcelona who established the world record for number of goals scored until Lionel Messi broke it.) It is also a good practice to integrate dual-nationality players who have strengthened our talent pools as in the case of the Younghusband brothers.

It would be wise for our leaders fostering the development of football as a major national sport to humbly learn from the experiences of our ASEAN peers like Vietnam, Indonesia, and Thailand who are ahead of us in their football development programs. The Vietnam national football team has arguably been the most successful Southeast Asia men’s football team. They won the AFF Championship in 2018, were the regular SEA Games gold medalist (U-23), reached final round of Asian qualifiers for the FIFA World Cup (2022 cycle), and benefited from long-term coaching under Park Hang-seo. There is no question that Vietnam is ahead of the Philippines in football development as regards organization, consistency, and results.

(To be continued.)

Bernardo M. Villegas has a Ph.D. in Economics from Harvard, is professor emeritus at the University of Asia and the Pacific, and a visiting professor at the IESE Business School in Barcelona, Spain. He was a member of the 1986 Constitutional Commission.

bernardo.villegas@uap.asia