Cebu Football

EVER since I heard that a Southest Asian Games host can add or drop any event it wants, I’ve always thought that this rule should be revised, if not dropped.     It seems hosting the biennial games is such a burden that you’d have to give all the incentives to the hosts to make it worth their time or the millions they are likely to spend.

THE Cebu City Sports Commission (CCSC) wants to set the record for the most participants in an archery tournament  this November by gathering 10,000 archers. But where can the CCSC find 10,000 archers when you’d be hard-pressed to get 100? It’s simple, the CCSC is using a tried and tested formula by tying up with the public schools and teaching teachers who will, in turn, teach students.

(This is my column for Sun.Star Cebu's Jan. 26 issue. Sorry footie fans, I'm taking a footie break--ML) I'VE always felt that archery, not boxing, would produce the country's first gold medal in the Olympic games but the only problem is, most of the archers we know are those playing basketball or those characters in online games. Why archery?  It's simple.  Like shooting, we know our best athletes can make it to the Olympics and unlike boxing, you don't have to pray to the officials to get a favorable decision.  It's just you and the target.

TWO of my favorite women’s players will be slugging it out tonight in the Australian Open women’s semifinals--Li Na and Maria Sharapova--the last two winners of the French Open.

(Taking a short break from footie topics for a while. Here's another one on Lance Armstrong.---ML) Can you forgive Lance Armstrong? Should Lance Armstrong be forever banned from all sports? He lied to us for so long and said he didn’t do it. He fought so hard to keep his name clean that it seemed, he was just banking on this image, of his cancer-survivor who could do no wrong that cheating, for him, must be impossible.

(Taking a mini-break from footie topics this month.  Here's a column on Lance Armstrong's confession--ML) IT'S difficult watching one of the persons you look up to get unmasked as a fraud on TV. A bully, a jerk, a liar. Lance Armstrong said that of himself. But there’s a lesson to all of this, one that athletes, coaches, and even teachers—especially those involved in Department of Education-organized meets--should learn.

Here are a few photos during the QCU vs. Pachanga match and of the Sinulog Cup last weekend taken by Albert Flores

I COULDN’T believe it when someone in the grandstand screamed, “Go nigger go nigger go,” when Cebu Queen City United’s African player, Samson Olaniyi, got the ball in the PFF Smart Club championship match against Pachanga last Saturday at the Aboitiz Sports Field. And that dolt was cheering for home team!

COACH Michael Weiss’s two-year contract will end on Jan. 16 and while he’s been talking about the 2015 Asian Cup, the German coach who won the country’s first trophy and steered the Philippines to third place in the AFC Challenge Cup got a six-month extension. Six months. Predictably, he wasn’t too keen on the deal, and Cedelf Tupas of the Philippine Inquirer reported that he was asking for more time to consider it.

THERE are really those who don't like the way Coach Michael Weiss handles the team, and I thought, it was just part of the usual criticisms that goes along with the job of a national head coach. Or the rantings of those who used to be part of the national team. But when I read Philippine Football Federation president Nonong Araneta's rather strong words--albeit one that even surprised Nonong when it came out in spin.ph--I suspected that Coach Michael Weiss is on the way out.

DURING the very first televised game involving a Cebu football team on national TV, I was with a bunch of fans who trooped to a bar mid-afternoon and saw the Cebu Queen City United get their breakfast, lunch, dinner and everything in between handed to them by a talented Stallions FC squad in an embarrassing and humiliating 8-0 whitewash. Cebu Queen City United looked pitiful in that UFL Cup match, paying for their silly mistakes, while Stallions played perfectly, and Ruben Doctora Jr.---who shone in Cebu during the PFF Adidas Under 19 championship in 2004--had a brilliant goal of the year candidate.

I GOT a couple of reactions from my previous column on the Cebu Marathon, one highlighted the drop in numbers, while the other offered suggestions on how to keep the registration fee down, to entice more participants.

IT’S January and again and for the past three years, aside from the Sinulog festival, it also means it’s the Cebu Marathon month for local runners. The Cebu Executive Runners Club have been organizing a Sinulog run for the past five or six years—I remember meeting Mary Grace delos Santos for the first time in a CERC event—before deciding to do the Full Mary back in 2010.