Philippine Sports Satire: Philippine Soccer Pitches are good for mud wrestling

Soccer or Football is fast becoming one of the most popular team sports in the country. The Azkals or the Philippine National football team has greatly increased the awareness of casual sports fans about this emerging sport. The local football league is getting TV time from AKTV and Studio 23. A lot of news are written about football. Indeed, everything seems to be bright about football.

I went to some local tournaments to check on the status of this sport in Cebu. Well, tournaments are played weekly and there are even teams from out of town. The competition is tough and the players are really passionate about the sport. One thing that I noticed though is that we do not have a decent football pitch to play on. Almost all of the football fields here in the country are not properly maintained. When it rains, our fields become muddy.

Muddy fields definitely will somehow slow the development of our players. We could make this an advantage though. We tell FIFA that Philippine football is not played in grass but in mud. Just like clay is used in Spain and France for tennis while people in England use grass. We can probably say to FIFA that it is what it is. We cannot afford indoor facilities yet and the cost maintaining a good football field is prohibitive. The drawback though is that muddy fields could cause more injuries and some games could involve mud wrestling.

Our country is ranked near the bottom of the FIFA rankings but I am sure that if we trained our players in mud, Wayne Rooney will not be able to outrun the Azkals in their home mud i mean turf.