By Ashley Hammond, Staff Reporter
Dubai: Any success for the Philippines national team at next month's AFC Challenge Cup will be against all odds, according to their coach Michael Weiss, who blames ‘internal politics' for the team's far from ideal preparations.
The Azkals (Street Dogs) are in Dubai for a training camp until February 17 and will play in Kathmandu, Nepal, at the Asian Cup equivalent for emerging nations from March 8 to 19. Their group consists of three past champions, Tajikistan, India and North Korea — a pooling co-captain James Younghusband has dubbed ‘The Group of Death'.
As a warm-up they will play the under-23s teams of Uzbekistan and Australia on February 11 and 16 respectively at Dubai's Al Nasr Stadium in Oud Mehta (kick-offs 8pm).
But issues surrounding the Philippines' newly-formed domestic league and politics regarding the release of club players for national team duty is threatening to disrupt their preparations for the biggest tournament in the developing football nation's short history. So far 18 players have flown in from Manila after being wrestled from their clubs and a further five now expect to fly in from Europe, where release clauses have also been hard-fought affairs.
Internal problems
Elsewhere in the world, it is the clubs who form the national team, but in the Philippines the fame of the Azkals has sparked new-found club structure, making it ironic that clubs now threaten to hold their players back.
Weiss said: "We've had far from ideal preparation, what with internal problems and clubs demanding their players, as per Fifa rules all over the world. That has taken its toll on us and has left us disadvantaged. Last year [pre-league professionalism] I had the players with me all the time and that's why we could develop as a squad so quickly, but now we are struggling.
"Clubs have their rights and we have to adjust," added Weiss. "We are happy the clubs are there now and that they give the players an income so they can make a living out of the game. In these kind of growing nations you face these issues and you have to make the most out of it.
"We always made sure last year we play opposition that is stronger than us. That's why we have Australia and Uzbekistan now to physically challenge the players, because local league and domestically we're at a very low level," he said.
Spirit within
"But it's important players are made available for this exposure. If we can bring in a few more European-based players we'll have a good chance to make top four in Nepal.
"Should we get to the semi-finals you never know what might happen. Obviously our primary goal is to win. That would cause a tsunami across the footballing world.
"Here in Dubai clubs have five pitches and we don't have five pitches in Manila. But what we do have is players hungry to fight and sacrifice everything.
"It's a challenge every day what with internal struggles at the federation. But we have a spirit within the team — this is a special phenomenon because no national team has ever risen this quickly before in world football," Weiss added of the team who are now ranked 157 in the world and 27 in the AFC.
Tickets for the Dubai friendlies are available at all Virgin Megastore, Giordano and Orlando Sports branches, costing Dh165 for VIP, Dh75 for category A and Dh50 for category B places.
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january pa lang naglalaro na ang team. we had two tune up games - CF Madrid and Icheon. and now its Feb and we have 4 games lined up - Uzbeks, aus under 23 and a qatar club. then we face malaysia at the end of the month.
ReplyDeletethis is a pretty good work out for a national team. if you look at india, tajikistan they dont have a schedule as busy as ours.
so yeah i can see why some peeps are fuming at the latest preemptive excuse. wasnt he, weiss, the one who designed this training sched last year? and now he is saying that we are under prepared?
adequate na itong training natin. even if the foreign based players arrives 2 days before the match, they will fit in OK. cohesion is not an excuse. because cohesion has never really been our problem. how can you say that we lack cohesion when we dominate posession in most games? look at games vs singapore, nepal, icheon, sri lanka, mongolia etc. we didnt look like a team that lacks cohesion.
and regarding the issue with clubs - difficulty releasing players for national duty. hindi lang sa pinas nangyayari yan.
bubulosok nga naman ang ilong mo niyan.
Just because we've had (or are having) quite a few training matches, it doesn't constitute as being adequate.
DeleteLast year, preparations for the prelim qualifier against Mongolia ractically started at the beginning of January and continued until the first leg, then there was that training camp in Japan prior to second leg. For World Cup qualifiers, they started training two months prior to match day. Then after the first they went to Bahrain. For the Long Teng Cup, they prepared for a month!! So ya, the national team was much more prepared last year then it is this year (so far since its still early days in 2012).
Dominate possession? lol! I don't know what games you've been watching but we've only dominated possession in a few games last year.... Mongolia at home (they parked the bus), Sri Lanka at home, Nepal at home. On top of that, we've had some of our best players for these, that won't be the case for when it actually matters, The Challenge Cup. And how can you mention Icheon as a game that demonstrates that the team has cohesion. The team was shit! As was Ichoen... a very scrappy and boring game.
the team clearly demonstrated good cohesion in the games i mentioned. the game against singapore, in the first half and early in the second half it looked like we were the team that was going to score the first goal. yeah singapore scored 2 goals and we had zilch. i blame that on poor defending.
Deleteso stop blaming it on poor cohesion cause thats getting tired.
how did you watch those games? online? what sort of internet connection do you have? dial up?
LOL! I'm not blaming it on anything. The reply above was just to point out to you that some of what you said are false!
DeleteIndia played Bayern Münich in January and playing the National teams of Oman and Azerbaijan this month.
ReplyDeleteLOL. Owned myself there. But hey... We played la galaxy.
ReplyDeleteJet lag and lack of cohesion is not an acceptable excuse. I'm sure Weiss will use them excuses if we lose.
Bayern Munchen and LA Galaxy is like LA Lakers and some German basketball club. Huge difference.
DeleteWell anyway club tour matches in general are nothing but just some entertainment so it doesn't really matter whatever. Indonesia or Thailand sometimes plays even Man U, Liverpool, Chelsea but no one takes it seriously.
That title of the article by the author.... ridiculous! Just shows how retarded the nickname of the national team is! Yet people go around like its cool! ffs!
ReplyDelete