Anything & Everything

Tonight the Philippine Azkals will play against Kuwait for the second round World Cup Qualifying match at the Rizal Memorial Stadium in Manila. Everyone is praying for a miracle, especially after Kuwait’s 3 goals in the first round. As my son and nephew has been saying, the Azkals need 4 goals and they should not allow the 95th-ranked Al-Azraq to score any. Three factors could help the Azkals today: The boost from the return of Aly Borromeo and Stephan Schrock on the field.       The first round showed us how important effective defenders are. The twelfth man. The profound impact of supporters and fans on how a team      performs has long been acknowledged as effective, and in the case of Azkals it certainly helps. They have played against Kuwait before and have studied how the team plays and work together, and most importantly the team has learned their lesson from the first game and can correct the misconceptions and errors in the first. While everyone is rooti...

At last! After so many years of rooting for Los Blancos (and recently, FC Schalke 04 becoz of Raul) and by default to Spain, I can now support my own team, the Azkals, our very own Philippine National Football Team. We were watching the game last Sunday inside my sister’s bedroom since I do not have a TV inside mine, and though the TV in the living room is bigger, it seemed more natural (and excitingly noisy) to watch together. So one can only imagine how crowded it was with 4 adults and 5 children ranging from ages 6 to 13 and all of us shouting, getting all excited, and giving their own versions to some of the moves. Since I started watching late coz I had to finish something I thought the Azkals were wearing their home team uniforms which is the white so I was lost for a few seconds. I know that they wore the blue soccer kit in Sri Lanka because that is their away team uniforms. My son was teasing me that it was okay for me to cheer for the white team if I really wanted t...