Something is happening in the Philippines. In a nation of contrasts, where vicious regional politics and insurgencies lie hand-in-hand with white sandy beaches, cold beer and warm smiles, football is stirring.
The Philippines has no pedigree in football and, remarkably for a South-East Asian nation of 90 million people, fell as low as 195th on the FIFA rankings in 2006.
Visits to Manila provided no information in the local papers.
Indeed, a visit to the Philippines made the coverage in Australia appear significant and meaningful.
But something has changed. Six years ago, the Philippines Football Federation (PFF) fully embraced the idea of searching the significant diaspora for players for the national side.
It turned out to be a fortuitous choice.
21-year old goalkeeper Neil Etheridge was unearthed at Fulham, defender Robert Gier at Ascot United, and others were found in various divisions in Germany, Iceland, Denmark, Spain and the USA.
Perhaps the most remarkable discovery was that of the Younghusband brothers, James and Phil, who had both played for Chelsea reserves and were reportedly found by an online gamer, who discovered them via Football Manager.
The 2010 AFF Suzuki Cup provided the platform for an awakening, and the Philippine public was caught unawares.
With a complete unknown in England’s Simon McMenemy (previously the assistant at Worthing who play in the eighth tier of English football) as coach, the Philippines stunned regional power, Singapore, by holding them to a 1-1 draw.
Then they followed this up with the biggest upset in the history of the tournament, when they defeated Vietnam 2-0 in front of 40,000 hostile fans in Hanoi.
A draw with Myanmar followed and the Philippines were into the semi-final, facing Indonesia where they eventually succumbed 1-0 in front of 70,000 Indonesians at Jakarta’s Galora Bung Karno Stadium.
Manila was abuzz and befitting a nation obsessed with mobile phones, everyone was twittering about the ‘Azkals’, Tagalog for stray-mongrel dogs, that formed their national side.
And hence a nickname was born.
So I returned to Manila recently and was amazed to see a seven-story picture of Phil Younghusband adorning a skyscraper and a myriad of news reports bemoaning the time the Azkal players spend on product endorsements instead of training.
My work colleagues, who could not tell you who Arsenal or Bayern Munich are, informed me that the Azkals will be playing Sri Lanka in their World Cup qualifier in June after having opted out of the last two tournaments.
Football in the Philippines has a long way to go. However, at least now, it has a starting point.
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