AFC Challenge Cup Qualifiers: Philippines top Group E as rivalry with Turkmenistan grows
On to Maldives - the Philippines topped Group E to
advance to the next phase of the 2014
AFC Challenge Cup. Roehl Niño Bautista, GMA News
Online
With a 3-0 default win from Brunei, an 8-0 thrashing of Cambodia, and 1-0 victory over Turkmenistan, the Philippines won nine points with the highest goal difference of the competition to top their group and the qualification period as a whole. Defeating Turkmenistan for the very first time, the Philippines is now the team to beat come 2014 on the main stage of the Challenge Cup in the Maldive Islands.
With these performances, the Philippines is set to jump to their highest FIFA Ranking ever, possibly within the 130s, when they are released next time. So with a growing rivalry with Turkmenistan, Phil Younghusband back to his scoring ways, seven clean sheets in nine games, but more controversy off the pitch, we dissect the Philippines’ route to the 2014 Challenge Cup main stage.
‘Like a Final’
In the post-match press conference, the Turkmenistan coach, Hojageldiyev Yazguly, said, “It was a very interesting game…I think this match was like a final.” Similar sentiments followed from Coach Weiss who added, “For me, Turkmenistan will be the team to beat again and on neutral soil it will be different.”
Ladies and gentlemen, what we have is a rivalry.
There wasn’t much in this game, and the Turkmenistan coach pointed out, “The last two games against the Philippines, the luck was on our side but this time the luck was with [the Philippines].”
However, this is the advancement the Philippines has made. Turkmenistan was rated 121st in the world in the previous FIFA Rankings, dropping 19 places that month due to a lack of games and the natural cycle, rather than any statement of their quality. Turkmenistan was considered by many to be the best team in the Challenge Cup Qualifiers, as runners-up to North Korea in the previous two editions, and the Philippines went and beat them.
Whatever you think of the style of play, who should or shouldn’t start, how Neil Etheridge wasn’t even among the subs, or the lack of substitutions from those who were on the bench, valid concerns, there is no doubting the progress of this team. Turkmenistan has now been defeated in a continually growing list of countries the Philippines have beaten for the very first time under manager Dan Palami and coach Michael Weiss.
This list includes India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Mongolia, Tajikistan, Myanmar, Palestine, Singapore, and a couple more if you don’t include the Olympic Games forty years ago as full international matches. That list, that progress, and this line-up, is the best the Philippines has ever had. The biggest challenge now is keeping them together.
Phil rediscovers where he put his Golden Boot
Phil Younghusband finished as the leading scorer of the 2012 Challenge Cup, with two more than anyone else, totaling six in that competition. Here, the top scorer of the Philippines scored five goals, again two ahead of everyone else, to take his tally to 33 for his country. It seems he really enjoys playing in the Challenge Cup, and for the rest of the teams left in the competition, their challenge will be to keep him quiet.
In the Suzuki Cup, he hit a dry spell as teams had scouted the Philippines, identified him as the major threat, and bullied him out of the game. It was effective and his only goal came against Myanmar at the start of the second half, in a tournament where he was pushed and elbowed into anonymity.
While this tactic may prove effective again for the other teams in the Challenge Cup, it will be too much of a price for other teams to pay now. Committing two defenders to bully Younghusband would leave space for Javier Patiño, who has proven himself worthy of a place in the starting line-up with a brace in his debut and an enterprising performance against Turkmenistan. That means the Philippines are top dog and can go out playing to win every single game come March 2014.
The only caveat for Younghusband is he got sent off versus Turkmenistan. A yellow card in the first half for deliberately handling the ball was followed by a second for holding onto his man and dragging him back in the 85th minute. He will therefore be unavailable for the first group game in the 2014 Challenge Cup.
Stalwart defense and team spirit
The unsung heroes of the Azkals was their defense. If the defense goes unnoticed, they’ve done their job well and Rob Gier in particularly never put a foot wrong. After the game the veteran Azkal said, “I think today the game was all about the defenders… I think we’ve proved we have all the right ingredients to show we can be a very good team”.
Of the squad as a whole, he said, “When people keep asking about what’s special about the team I keep coming back to it; it’s the team spirit.” And with Rob Gier and Juani Guirado solid in defense, the Philippines have kept seven clean sheets in their last nine games (not including the default win against Brunei).
This has been part of an overall defensive unit where Dennis Cagara and Carli De Murga have thwarted the wing play, offering offensive options too, and seen fourteen clean sheets in the twenty games since the last Challenge Cup. During the Suzuki Cup, the defensive strength came at the expense of the attack, but now the Philippines look much more balanced with, as Weiss said, “the best still yet to come.”
Stadium half-full or half-empty?
On the pitch, the Philippines was superb and has been constantly improving. But off the pitch there is so much more that needs to be done – and a lot of it is just common sense.
The most prestigious tournament in South East Asia, the Suzuki Cup, sold their most expensive tickets for the Final at around P700. Yet somehow the organizers of these qualifiers thought that charging almost four times that amount for some seats was appropriate.
Group D hosts Nepal had an average of 16,000 for their group matches, more than twice the Philippine attendance. The Philippines has the potential to average similar figures quite easily and this would build a sustainable financial picture for Philippine football, something essential for the continued growth of the sport. But if ever decisions like ticket prices here are repeated, it will not only choke the National team, but the UFL and grassroots football too.
Who makes it to the Maldives?
As Group E winners, the Philippines will join the other four group winners for the final stage of the Challenge Cup, namely Myanmar, Kyrgyzstan, Afghanistan, and Palestine.
Turkmenistan made it as the best runners-up while Bangladesh are the second best runners-up and these seven nations will join host country Maldives in March 2014, for the group stage.
Of interest in the qualification stage, 2006 winners Tajikistan and 2008 winners India, who the Philippines beat in the group stage last year to qualify for the semifinals, will not be in the final stage for the first time since the competition began as both finished as runners-up in their groups. With weaker goal differences than Turkmenistan and Bangladesh, it was simply the luck of the draw as those who qualified could rack up the goal difference against Cambodia and the Northern Mariana Islands, respectively.
The Challenge Cup has certainly had its share of challenges so far, and we can probably expect a new and hopefully fairer system of qualification next time around. But for 2014, the Philippines have just put themselves in top contention to win their first ever internationally sanctioned trophy. Come March, 2014, everyone will be looking out for the Philippines. - AMD, GMA News
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