NO SHORT TERM FIX

by Santi Araneta

Country versus Club? There is no right or short answer to this.  This topic has been debated for decades in the world of football but has landed on our shores only today.  Who would you choose between your Club or Country is not the question that should be asked.  Instead we should be asking ourselves and, more importantly, everyone involved in Philippine Football: How do we make football a mainstream sport in the Philippines?

In order for football to be a mainstream sport in our nation we need to sustain this steady growth of Football in our Country.  We need to have a collective and active participation on all sides.  When the quality of our games increase more fans will come in.  When more fans come in, more sponsors will be willing to get involved.  When sponsors come into play there will be an influx of money and having more money allows us to bring in better players. It’s a snowball effect.

Let’s talk quality.  How do we increase the quality of our game?

Today the UFL is composed of a handful of Fil-foreign Azkal players, foreign players who have been exposed to the same football as our Fil-foreign Azkals and lastly our local talents who were born, raised and trained either by the PFF Grassroots program, UAAP, NCAA and other private youth programs.  Exposing our local talents to stand side by side with top tier players in the UFL will raise their quality and today we are already seeing and feeling that.

The quality has been steadily improving and people have taken notice. Today more and more people go out of their way to watch UFL games. This fan growth will lead to the support of corporate sponsors, which is key to bringing in more money to the sport as a whole. This will inspire kids to take up football seriously as their primary career in the UFL or even in other foreign clubs.  In the coming months or years, rich foreign clubs will lure our local talents to play in other International leagues. Luckily, with a population of around 100 million the odds that we produce enough local football talent are very high.

With the alignment of the UFL, our country will be able to harness the skills and talents of more homegrown talent and build a roster large enough for the PFF to draw from and strong enough to compete in the international tournaments we choose to join.  So despite the fact that many of our national games are not typically FIFA-sanctioned, we would no longer have to depend too much on the cooperation of foreign clubs to fulfill our duties to the national team.

In reality, there is no short-term fix, but there is a fix. Let’s all work together not against each other and take advantage of this snowball until football becomes a mainstream sport in the Philippines.

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