The theatre that is football

The entire neighborhood was watching, and although each house had a television set going, the hoots and screams came simultaneously; I presumed these were the instances when the ball was going nearer the goal of the Azkals.

Down with a bad flu, I could only make out how the Philippine-Mongolia game Wednesday night was going from the sounds of our and our neighbors’ teevee sets and the garrulous reaction of the viewers. The staccato “ay! ay! ay!” indicated there were a few kicks nearer the goal. The collective sigh meant the ball was lost. The loud whoop, whistles, “yes!” was for a goal.  All the way to the ending, when people broke into the “Pinoy Ako” anthem, it seemed like I was also at the Pana-ad with the throng.  

People were watching, I thought, and they were thrilled by what they saw.  In getting thrilled,  I’m sure there was some education going on, the mechanics of the football game being slowly drilled into the minds of people.

While it is true that the physical attributes of the Azkals had helped initially spark this renewed interest in the game, it looks like the love affair is deepening. And well that isn’t bad at all, we need a national sporting pastime beside basketball, and football delivers more than just fun, thrill and excitement.  And given its height demands, football is one sport most Filipinos can definitely play and even excel in.

Football requires plenty of mental work. Unlike basketball, wherein scores go beyond 100, providing audiences that many thrill moments when a team scores, football  thrill is not anchored on scores alone.  It is in how the ball is moved, hopefully up to inside the goal, using only the feet and body, minus the arms.  This unnatural act of trying to control the ball only with the feet, of shooting it without the use of hands is a skill mastered only by years of practice. Try it yourself to know what it means.  It is a task that requires as much thinking and strategizing as kicking and running.  This is why a goal in football can just send the fans in a frenzy, in those now-familiar waves of humanity; it is reached only after thorough planning, quick reaction, sharp responses and sheer physical agility.

What happens in that expansive green of the football field is not simply a physical battle of figuratively armless players, but a clash of strategies long thought of, defined and refined through countless hours of practice and analysis.  It isn’t such a wonder why the rules say contending teams can only play in the contest venue only for an hour prior to the actual competition – the international body of the game has set this rule to ensure fairness, so that none of the teams get the edge of familiarity. The Azkals played a few games in Pana-ad before the match only because it is their home stadium; even so, Pana-ad was closed to any practice for a specified period prior to the game.  Team Mongolia, of course, got its hour in the playing venue.

The theatre that is football is given to mental work; there is so much to analyze about it, that in Europe for example, people talk about nothing but the odds weeks before a match happens.

While the Philippine-Mongolia match signaled for us the bright future for football, it also highlighted the ugly side of the country’s sports development.  Behind the screaming fans and the glitzy TV coverage of ABS-CBN, the unbelievable dynamism and energy of fans and the melodramatic stirrings of national unity , finally, through sports, there were ugly stories of attempts to steal tickets,  misrepresentation simply to hog the limelight, of jockeying for credits.

Aside from further learning and enjoying the thrills of the sport, it looks like football fans will have to do something more: watch the backstage with as much passion as they do the actual stage in this theatre called football.*

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