jangan:

pinoytumblr:

sonborj:

I’m a pinoy, and like most of Filipino males, I adore basketball. I grew up in the Toyota-Crispa era. The time when Atoy Co would score consecutive treys and Sonny Jaworski would team up with Francis Arnaiz to battle back. Hell, come to think of it, I think that’s where my mom got my nickname from, Sonny, from Sonny Jaworski. My mom as you know was a die-hard Toyota fan. I remember there was a time when brown-outs were rampant in the 80s and my mom planned to buy a 12v Car battery just to power up our tv in case the brown out occur mid-game when Toyota was playing!

Football on the other hand is not in our daily vocabulary. The only source of information that I had on this sport as a kid was from TV commercials. This sport is alien to us. If you’re not Pinoy, let me help you understand why. 

Pinoys are Brown-Americans. Half a century after being colonized, we are still ardent immitators and followers of what our White brothers are doing. Football isn’t popular with us Pinoys because it isn’t popular in the States. Our tastes and preferences are heavily dictated by the tastes and preferences of the general American public.

Next, Pinoys are generally poor, and football is comparably more expensive than playing basketball. Football,to be played with gusto, would require a sturdy pair of shoes. Basketball on the other hand can be played even with just an old pair of slippers and you can still pick a fight due to the high level of competition in the streets.

But let us say the poor Pinoys got lucky and can now afford to buy those football shoes. The next problem is the playing field. The soccer fields in the Philippines are usually located inside the school campuses. Who would enroll in a school just to have access to the football field?

Now for discussion’s sake, let’s say we were able to create a make-shift football field in the streets with matching goal posts. Where will you get the other 21 players to play with? Or let’s tone that down, how about a football game with just  5 players each team? Still, you need to look for 9 players. That is very difficult in a country where knowledgeable players are from exclusive schools. Again the question comes, are you going to enroll in a school just to learn the basics of this game? Basketball in comparison again, can be played alone or with just a friend. I can’t even remember how many times I was not able to play in a basketball court because there were too many players available and only 10 are needed.

Let’s deepen the analysis and let’s pretend. Pretend that the Philippine school system will introduce football as a required PE subject. Let’s pretend that for every 1000 households, each one will have a football field. Pretend also that procuring football shoes is as easy as accessing pirated CDs and DVDs in the streets of Manila. Will Football gain success in this country? No. Because Football is a game of ‘patience’.

In a game where it can last as long as 2 hours and the ending score is 0-0, the general Pinoy wouldn’t take interest in that. We like high scoring games. We like games where in at any instant, something spectacular happens. Like someone hitting a 3-point, or someone dunking the ball, or the team coming from behind 20 points deficit, etc etc. We like to get involved and with involvement means handling the ball. In football, you can run for 2 hours and just be able to touch the ball for  a total of 2 minutes.

We Pinoys like instant results. We bet on cockfights where you’ll learn of the winner after some 5 minutes, not 2 hours. It is far from our imagination to play a game where you constantly dribble the ball for 10 minutes and pass it around just to be able to create a shot for your forwards.

What I’m saying is, it needs a turn-around of general thinking and a heavy support from the Government to make football popular in this country.

And I say, another 50 more years before this happens.

Reading this made me realize how much Filipinos need to learn football and appreciate football or futsal, even. I think our physique/general build is more suitable for football - we’re shorter than most foreigners and we (can) move fast. I’m a huuuge fan of basketball and I’ve learned to love it more when I started playing back in high school, but I have to admit, if you’re taller you get more advantage (aside from the fact that there’s a surplus of small forwards, shooting guards and point guards that need not be woodland-ish tall). I’m all for sports, I guess.. So why not give football/soccer or futsal a chance? :)