AFC Challenge Cup: Philippines is not a serious contender

By
Somesh Upadhyay
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35
2884

Philippines football team or the Azkals as they are fondly called are grouped in the Group B of AFC Challenge Cup alongside India, DPR Korea and Tajikistan. FIFA ranked 156, they are just behind India (joint 154 with Bahamas).

In the qualifiers, they were grouped with Palestine, Bangladesh and Mayanmar. But they managed only one win against Bangladesh and qualified as the second best team in the group with 2 draws and a win.

Right now Philippines football is at a transition period but it beggars saying that they are struggling as a footballing nation. Their best memories in the recent past roots from the dream run in Suzuki Cup 2010 where they reached the semi-final.

The Philippines FA has implemented a new strategy to give the football in the nation a big boost. They have started looking for Filippino origin players growing in fotballing nations. The idea is that the players will bring in quality to the team and inspire a new generation of players.

Following this principle, they have quite a few names at hand, many of whom are established/semi-established players in big leagues. There are players like Neil Etheridge and Paul Mulders. Neil is a reserve goalkeeper for English premier League team Fulham and has been cleared to play for the Azkals in AFC Challenge Cup. Paul plays for Dutch Premier league Eredivisie  team Ado den Haag and is of Dutch-Filipino origin.

Their captain James Younghusband is of English-Filipino origin while Misagh Bahadoran is of Persian-Filipino origin. In fact the list is quite long and includes Stephan Schrock (German-Filipino, Bundesliga Div 2), Dennis Cagara (Danish-Filipino, Bundesliga Div 2), Roland Mûller (German-Filipino, Bundesliga Div 2) and Angel Guirado (Spanish-Filipino, PhilippinesDiv 1)

This variety of flavour has certainly added to their firepower. But the team hardly got to practice together as some of the foreign based players were not released by the respective clubs. In the name of camp, they would only like to remember the Dubai camp as the one preceding this in Philippines was severely interrupted by the clubs demanding for players.

Azkals lost their first friendly in Dubai against Uzbekistan U23 by 0-3 but came back strong in the second match against Australia which they lost 0-1 after putting up a good fight. They would like to take heart from the match against Malaysia which they drew 1-1 at home.

The Azkals’ manager Dan Palami however is not very hopeful about their chances and had set the semi-final of the AFC Challenge Cup as their target. In an interview earlier he had said,

We want just like what we did in the Suzuki Cup to go to the semifinals at least, if we make it to the finals, that will be a dream come true

So clearly the the Azkals are putting themselves as severe underdogs and are going into the tournament with no serious ambition of winning it.

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35 COMMENTS

  1. hahahhahahaha!!!! for a stupid indian like the writer of this article.. where is team india now??? back in india sulking?????????? hahahahajajahahaha!!! good!! stay home and walk your dogs ok.. hahahahaha.. never ever underestimate the heart of the filipino you moron!

  2. lmao who’s at the semi finals now? india? yoohoo, where are you? oh yeah you lost all ur matches 😛

    philippines = new afc challenge cup champions 😀

  3. so what now? 😀  Philippines is still not a serious contender? Azkals had just beaten 2 former champs and one which has a higher FIFA rank.  Oh well, good luck Azkals against the Turks. You just created history today!

  5. As I said dont underestimate people, “dont judge a book by its cover ” most especially ” DONT UNDERESTIMATE THE BITE OF AN AZKALS TEAM”

  11. this blogger did not even include our win against qatar’s first division team and also called as a team without ambition of winning… well how about your former champions taking a 0-2 loss. Can we call them LOSER!!!

  13. Calm Down Please.. This is just a blog.. Just keep on supporting our team.. Don’t make some none-sense fight here.. I Am happy that being an underdog right now and because of our Manager DAN PALAMI and COACH WEISS and our SCOUTS abroad.. Football is getting better in our COUNTRY.. One Step at a Time.. Awoooooooooo….

  14. Nice article. The Philippine Azkals did not play seriously moments ago when they trashed your Indian team 2-nil. Otherwise if we played the serious game, we could have won 4-nil. 

    Oh. No Jeje Lalpeklua? No Baichung Bhutia? Anyway, we have no Stephan Schrock, no Aly Borromeo, no Dennis Cagara, no Dennis Wolf, etc. That’s fair enough. Sri Lanka was better when they drew with us 1-1 (and we won 5-1 on aggregate). 

    Somesh Upadhyay, go play cricket. Concentrate on cell biology.

  17. and the azkals just outplayed india…no serious ambition huh? to be in the semis is a big deal already, you wanted to win and you just belittled a team which finally beat you! wahahaha. philippine team indeed is now fighting!

  19. yes we are underdogs and we are not serious contender! By the way, Azkals defeated India 2-nil just a couple of minutes.

  22. Okay….put less pressure on the Philippines…come on, be complacent – take us for granted, belittle us, yes we’re weak, we suck……as long us we’re seen as that the better for us. Street dogs can bite too!

  23. considering the SEA region is stronger in footbal than the cricket playing region where india plys thier trade these are strong words…we will seee.

  25. No ambition? We’ll see. And the 2nd match in Dubai was alam
    Al ahli of qatar which they won. Australia was the 3rd match.

  27. the last time the Azkals were taken for granted, they finished the tournament with a BANG and made it to the top 10 sporting news of the year…i hope they will do the same in the challenge cup…but if not, i hope we can go kick some 5-6 butt!!!

  29. thats why Philippines is placed in the Group of former champions DPR Korea, India, Tajikistan….. because Philippines will be the 2012 Challenge Cup Champions…. Im sure all the teams are afraid by now what the Philippines can do…

  31. Ouch, coming from an Indian blog. Personally, I think we can beat India, mainly because I feel South Asian teams are overrated, and are inferior in quality to South East Asian teams. However, I think we just need to wait and see, and prove that out on the Pitch.

  33. Korea, India and Tajikistan might just watch out because they might get caught off guard when our AZKALS strikes! 😉 To all the people who our doubting us, just you watch on Friday how we play against DPR Korea… AZKALS WE BELIEVE!!!!!!! 

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