The view from the bar: Azkals vs. Mongo

By Sid Ventura
For Yahoo! Southeast Asia

I can’t tell you how exhilarating it was to be at Panaad Stadium for the Philippines-Mongolia AFC Challenge Cup match. I can’t tell you because I don’t know.

I was unable to fly to Bacolod, so I had planned to catch the game at home. But Sky Cable chose this day, of all days, to have a massive service interruption, forcing me to find an establishment that was showing the match.

It turned out to be a blessing in disguise, because there are few things in this world that are more fun to do than watch the Azkals with a bunch of strangers, collectively cheer and scream, slap high fives, slowly get intoxicated, and listen to one of them adoringly compare Chieffy Caligdong to Pele.

The bar/resto I chose was actually my third choice. The first one said their cable connection wasn’t functioning properly. The second one was a case of “wrong program.” I saw a bunch of guys huddled together, all intently staring at a TV set, so I quickly parked and ran over to them, expecting to find the match already being shown. Instead, the TV was showing video karera. Oops.

When I finally got lucky on my third attempt, it was worth the hunt. A group of guys were sitting around the restaurant’s bar waiting for the match to begin. They weren’t the sophisticated lot you’d expect to find in any trendy bar in Eastwood or Makati, but they were down-to-earth, opinionated, loud but not to the point of being rowdy, and for some of them, not too steeped in football knowledge (which made the night even more fun).

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