Football politics and the homeless Azkals

(Photo from the AFF Suzuki Cup website.)

IN A basketball-crazy country, it’s a minor miracle that the Philippine sports spotlight now shines on the Philippine football team. Its Azkals nickname – given in 2005 by a small but rabid Internet fanbase – suits the team perfectly, in more ways than one. The team is composed of foreign-born players steeped in football tradition alongside gritty veterans from provincial football hotspots, most of whom are enlisted Armed Forces servicemen. On the pitch, they are gritty and tenacious, if often overmatched, just like their namesake mutts.

The Azkals rode on grit, tenacity, and a little luck en route to the semifinals of the ongoing ASEAN Football Federation Suzuki Cup. Long the whipping boy of the region, the team opened its campaign with a 1-1 draw against two-time champion Singapore. The Azkals followed that up with a 2-0 victory against hometown favorite and Suzuki Cup defending champion Vietnam, a win that silenced the 40,000 fans in attendance and observers hailed as the greatest upset in the history of the tournament.

At home, meanwhile, fans began to notice and the social networks began to buzz about the Cinderella run of the Philippine football team. By the time the Azkals took to the pitch against Burma, a.k.a. Myanmar, a local network had secured rights to air the match nationally. A 0-0 draw gave the Philippines its first-ever semifinal berth in the Suzuki Cup.

The Philippine football nation celebrated, if not on the streets, then at least on Twitter. But as with all Cinderella stories, midnight came abruptly for the Azkals. The Suzuki Cup semifinals feature a home-and-away series between teams, meaning the protagonists each play one game in its home field. But the ASEAN Football Federation decided that there was no suitable venue that could host the game between the Philippines and its semifinals opponent, powerhouse Indonesia, which meant that there wasn’t going to be any homecoming match for what suddenly looked like the quasi-homeless Azkals.

Midnight bell tolls for the Cinderella team

The team, it turns out, is the latest and most prominent victim of the infighting and politics within the Philippine Football Federation. The AFF decided not to hold a match in the Philippines after consultation with PFF president Mari Martinez, the most controversial figure in Philippine football. Earlier this year, an audit commissioned by the PFF board of governors showed that under Martinez’ watch, up to P3.4 million of funds released remained unaccounted for. Charged with misappropriating the funds and mismanagement, Martinez was impeached by the PFF congress in late November, but he was later reinstated by the International Federation of Association Football (FIFA). In a December 3 letter, FIFA instead instructed the PFF to hold another congress in 90 days to elect a new leadership. The PFF is among the most well-funded national sports federations in the country, receiving some $400,000 in aid from foreign football organizations such as FIFA and the Asian Football Confederation (AFC), as well as some support from corporate and individual donors.

The atmosphere between the PFF and the national football team has turned positively noxious, to say the least. Upon their arrival to the Philippines, the Azkals released a statement saying the team has not received any support from the PFF leadership under Martinez.

“We have not received one centavo of support from the PFF,” the statement read. “This year, we’ve never had any decent training grounds for us to practice on until recently when we trained at the Alabang Country Club and the International School of Manila. Even the simple matters such as processing the paperwork regarding our request for the release of the Armed Forces servicemen to national team duty cannot be done.”

To make matters worse, the AFF decided, upon Martinez’s recommendation, that the match that was supposed to be a home game for the Philippines would also be played in Jakarta, despite an offer from a neutral country, Vietnam, to host the match. Martinez justified the decision by telling the Philippine Star that the PFF would stand to gain financially from the move, as it would increase the federation’s share from match’s gate receipts. He also said that playing for a mammoth crowd, no matter how hostile, would be a unique experience for the Azkals.

How football explains the world

It does look like football is serving as a microcosm of what’s going on within this country, but it’s an experience that’s not exactly unique in the region.

For example, Vietnam’s recent emergence as a football power in Southeast Asia coincides with its emergence as a developing economy in the region. Last May, in a visit to Switzerland by Vietnamese President Nguyen Minh Triet, Swiss officials feted him not just for the favorable business conditions in his country but also for the dramatic improvement of its football program, which is slowly undergoing professionalization. Triet’s trip involved forums with both the financial company Credit Suisse and with FIFA.

Singapore is also a recent power in the sport in the region, and its road to football progress reflects its stature as one of the world’s great new global cities. Handicapped by a small population, the country naturalized several international football stars, such as Egmar Goncalves from Brazil, Mirko Grabovac from Croatia, and Itimi Dickson from Nigeria, to compete for the team. The move, while drawing some controversy, paid immediate dividends for Singapore, which won the 2007 and 2008 editions of the Suzuki Cup.

Thailand has long been the dominant team in the region, winning the ASEAN football championship in three of the first four regional tournaments. But its early exit from this year’s Suzuki Cup has led to plans of massive protests, both online and in real life, from the football-crazy populace to force the country’s football leadership to step down – a curious turn of events given Thailand’s recent history involving protests and leaders stepping down.

Indonesia, meanwhile, has been the heartbreak kid of Southeast Asia, having never won the regional championship despite having been runner-up three times. The team romped through the group stages of the Suzuki Cup this year, and its chances to become champion have never looked better. Earlier this year, no less than President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono called for a congress to look into the problems of the country’s football program, saying that failure in the sport is no longer an option for Indonesia. Reactions to the congress at the time had been lukewarm, but judging from the Indonesian football team’s performance so far, it seems to have had a positive effect.

Burma takes the cake

But when it comes to the craziest politics-related football tale (or football-related political tale), should it come as any surprise that Burma takes the cake? According to Wikileaks cables, the leader of Burma’s military junta, Than Shwe, considered spending $1 billion to purchase the Manchester United football club only several months after cyclone Nargis devastated the country. The general decided not to go ahead with the move because it would “look bad,” and instead ordered the creation of a new national football league.

According to the cables, Than Shwe used the stick-and-carrot approach to convince the country’s richest businessmen to put up teams in the league, requiring them to bring in foreign players and rack up an exorbitant payroll. One team had a budget of $2 million for 2009, an obscene amount of money in a country with a per-capita income of only $1,000 (by way of comparison, the Philippines’ per-capita income is $3,300). In exchange, the businessmen who owned the teams were expected to receive lucrative government contracts and import permits. A regime crony, Zaw Zaw, meanwhile chairs Burma’s football federation in charge of organizing its national team.