NBA CLEARS CLARKSON FOR ASIAD
Adecade ago, I was in Barotac Nuevo, Iloilo to cover the Azkals’ AFC Challenge Cup qualification campaign. Conventional knowledge among football buffs at that time suggested that the greatest Filipino footballer ever was born, in 1896, in this fabled town in the Visayas.
Football is so entrenched in Barotac that the trisikad drivers wore Ronaldinho jerseys while the walls of carenderias were lined with FC Barcelona posters. Confident that I was in the right place, I asked people there if they knew where Paulino Alcantara’s ancestral home was. All of them gave me a blank stare. No one knew the man they called El Rompe Redes, the net breaker, back in the day. It turned out that Alcantara was born in another town, in Concepcion. And that was a long, long time ago. But still.
Reality struck me hard: outside of online football forums, nobody really knew who this football legend who once donned the Philippine colors was. Alcantara, who held FC Barcelona’s goalscoring record of 369 goals for close to a century until an Argentinian phenom named Lionel Messi broke it four years back, was unknown to the contemporary Filipino.
Fast-forward to this day, and while Paulino Alcantara isn’t the household name a football fan would have hoped for, there’s still reason to celebrate: the 2018 Copa Paulino Alcantara. What better way to immortalize a legend than to name an annual top-tier competition after him.
Deciding on what to call the cup was an easy choice for the PFL executives, who quickly got the nod of the board of directors. With the help of Spain’s La Liga, the PFL managed to get in touch with Alcantara’s family in Europe.
“We are blessed that the next of kin of Paulino Alcantara gave us the approval to name the cup after him,” PFL Chief Executive Officer Lazarus Jansen Xavier told our media group during an interview at the chic Savoy Hotel Manila. “The family was shocked that someone from the Philippines contacted them,” Xavier said in jest. “And they were really excited when we told them of our plans.” Many fans and stakeholders in the Philippines were just as thrilled at this new additition to the football scene, which will see the six PFL clubs vying for the inaugural cup title. “The winner of the Copa Paulino Alcantara will get a slot in the 2019 AFC Cup. That is the incentive,” Xavier added.
Xavier, who hails from Malaysia, has been at the helm of the PFL since its inception two seasons ago. Tasked with professionalizing the fledgling league, Xavier’s newest challenge is to get the momentum running for the 2018 Copa Paulino Alcantara, following a well-received logo contest for the cup.
I always view the Philippines as a footballing nation. And the Paulino Alcantara cup is an integral part of football’s ongoing revival in this country. LAZARUS JANSEN XAVIER
away with it and even if Fiba tried to pattern its World Cup qualification after Fifa’s international windows, it still wouldn’t get football-level cooperation from the clubs. For the Asian Games, the NBA even pointed out that its agreement with Fiba is only limited to its qualifiers, the World Cup and the continental games (Asian Cup), and the Asian Games isn’t part of it.
Some cried foul, of course, saying the league is allowing Zhou Qi of the Houston Rockets to play in the Asian Games. Oh, come on, are we that naive? It’s China, they get away with anything, West Philippine Sea included. If Google will bend to Chinese demands just to enter the Chinese market, the NBA can do so. Our being very vocal basketball fans on social media, of being the country where most of the NBA teams and players’ social med followers come from, mean squat to the league’s bottom line.
Still, what’s done is done. We will have no Jordan Clarkson but, at least, the silver lining to all this drama is that we are sure he will be available in the third round of qualifiers for the World Cup. Clarkson or not, we still have a team in the Asiad, one with ageless guys like James Yap and Asi Taulava. They might not be the Clarkson type, but these guys will bleed red, yellow and blue for the team, which is curiously being marketed as simply the Nationals and not Gilas Pilipinas.
Besides, Clarkson’s absence may mean the spotlight will also be shone on the other Pinoy athletes who will be seeing action in the Asian Games. Yeah, I know, basketball will also get the lion’s share of the limelight given our history, but still, another silver lining is that hard-working athletes who toil under the radar may get that recognition they deserve once the games get going.
PFL Chief Exec. Officer