Cebu into National U17 finals

Image hosted by Photobucket.com
CEBU IN FINALS: The Cebu FA U17 is in the national finals. Will they win it all? Or will it be just like the U19, where they lost a disappointing finals match.
Sun*Star photo Ruel Rusillo

DESPITE a 7-0 beating from powerhouse Iloilo, the Cebu Football Association Under-17 squad landed in the top two to qualify to the Philippine Football Federation (PFF) U-17 National Championships later this year.

In its opening game, the CebuFA selection defeated host Dumaguete, 3-2, before that fateful encounter with Iloilo.

Iloilo then dealt the hosts a 4-0 defeat to finish first in the Visayas Regional Championships, held last May 18-20.

Only three teams joined the regionals, after Bacolod failed to field a team in the event organized in lieu of the Coke Go-For-Goal U-16 National Championships, which was scrapped last year due to financial reasons.

Though they are already in the finals, the CebuFA selection is still not sure whether there will be a national finals at all.

“During the managers meeting, we were told that there will be a national tournament later this year and this will be held in the Visayas if there are any bids for it,” CebuFA coach Glen Ramos said.

Whether their will be a nationals or not, CebuFA president Jonathan Maximo said the team will be kept intact as they are being groomed to play in other age-group tournaments in the following years.

The team includes Jose Paolo Pascual, Roy Joseph Sembrano and Benedict Luis Arriola of Paref-Springdale, Josephus Bernaldez, James Candido, Ric Ryan Fuentes and Don Francois Noel of Sacred Heart School-Jesuit (SHS-J), Jose Jordan Diao, Jessie Roy Melgo II and Howard Dwight Docino of Abellana National School.

Also in the team are Pomposo Atillo, Gene Manuel Gacayan III, Kyle Vincent Soriano of Don Bosco Technology Center (DBTC), Michael Sharpe of Cebu International School (CIS) and Jonathan Tan of the University of Southern Philippines.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Mother Nature plays spoilsport

The heavy rains spoiled the debut of defending champions Don Bosco College yesterday, cutting short the match between DBC A(?) and Bright. Hopefully, it will be a sunny Sunday. P.S. It will be interesting to note, how DBC divided its teams for the U12.
Read more

The failed U23 experiment

THE only positive thing that we can take in that loss against Timor Leste was that the U23 squad looked good in blue. And Ebong, too. The Blue-Haired fanatic whose voice we all heard on TV was fantastic. The team? The result? To be perfectly blunt it was a scrappy game from a scrappy team that seemed to treat the SEAG as a vacation, or a chance to gain more Twitter followers. (Yey, I can tweet the team apology first!) Going into the match, almost every fan who paid attention knew that we needed to win. Unfortunately, it seemed the players were operating on a different mindset.
Read more

Fair Play: The Devil's Advocate and CFA vs. CAFC

(This is my Fair Play column for Sun.Star Cebu on Feb. 6) I GOT an interesting e-mail the other day about the consequences for teams that withdraw from PFF-organized national tournaments and its corresponding sanctions. I guess, it’s time to play Devil’s Advocate. For PFF-organized events, there are four types of withdrawals—after confirming participation but before grouping or scheduling takes place, after regional finals but before grouping in nationals, after the grouping in the nationals, and in the course of the national competition.
Read more