Law and ICT: Philippines 2, Mongolia 0

Wednesday, February 9, 2011

Philippines 2, Mongolia 0

Image credit: flickr.com

Football, the beautiful game.

Football, or soccer as the Americans and Aussies call it, is the world's most popular sport. The most celebrated sporting event in the world is arguably (versus the Olympics) the FIFA World Cup, where intense national pride is at stake. The sport's greatest player ever, by acclamation, is Pele; he must be deemed to have the stature and authority to describe football as THE beautiful game.

Now, let's look at the Philippines. Here, the most popular sport is basketball (of course, we also consider boxing as a close contender given Manny Pacquiao's wide fanbase). Its popularity hitherto may be traced to our colonial roots as the US has deeply ingrained the sport in us, or actually our "imported" mentality lead us to embrace the sport hook, line, and sinker. Gotta make a change.

Image credit: calvinshub.com

I've just finished watching the Azkals beat the 10-man Mongolian team in the 1st leg of the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) Challenge Cup pre-qualifier. It was an ecstatic 2-0 win, both goals from winger Caligdong and striker Phil Younghusband coming in the waning seconds of the first half and injury time of the second half, respectively. I had quite a bad day today, but while watching the game I had bouts of shouting for joy every time the Pinoy booters net in a goal. That's the excitement and exhilaration this game brings!

Now, my segue to ICT comes from some pretty small things that caught my attention. In a nutshell, I think our technology is as yet not capable of showing an interesting and comprehensive football game. Since I used to watch and keep tabs on the English Premier League, I became (maybe too) familiar with how a football match must be covered. Cameras must be able to timely focus on the spot where real action happens. The statistics must provide the percentage of possession per side, shots on and off target, and passes made and completed. Any ruling of "offside" by the line official must be shown to the viewers so that they themselves can judge if the call is correct. All of these, things that make football complete and lively, are missing in that game.

I am happy to hear that many people would now love to support Philippine football. At the moment, Smart Telecom is committing P80M for a nationwide football league, while El Shaddai (yes, Mike Velarde) is now donating a P22M-worth piece of prime property in Paranaque to construct a football pitch, aside from the contributions of other businessmen and ordinary people who believe in the Filipino lads. Yeah, keep the funds coming! And hopefully soon, our technology will be able to catch up with this football fever! Someday, the real joys of watching a football game will be experienced by the Filipino fan who truly deserves to vividly see his team win--and feel Philippine pride.