Roots
Soccer and Pacquiao
By Marifi Jara
MAPUTO, Mozambique–Sitting here at the airport restaurant of Maputo, the capital city of Mozambique, waiting for my plate of samosas and rissois, I overhear talk at an adjacent table about soccer (or football – futebol here, not the American football). I am not being a tsismosa — intentionally listening in on other people’s conversations, though admittedly that is very entertaining when killing time at airports — it’s just that their impassioned voices are loud enough for others to easily hear. Football is, in as much as Filipinos talk avidly about basketball and our boxing giant Manny Pacquiao, a popular and well-loved sport here as in most other parts of the world.
I’ve recently become particularly interested in soccer, not as a sports fan nor even simply as an amused spectator.
It started with news headings I saw several weeks ago in my (almost) daily scan of the online editions of Philippine news websites. It was something about street children being sent to the World Cup, which will be held in South Africa this year. My initial thought was that is pretty cool considering that soccer is not a popular sport in the Philippines, but at the same time I wondered whether those children will actually be able to fully appreciate the opportunity for exactly the same reason that soccer is not a big deal in the country.
Anyway, I thought that would still be a fun and educational experience for the kids if only for the chance to travel to South Africa, which I found to be such a lovely country — with breathtaking landscapes that are so diverse — during a road trip holiday along its southern coast last year. I passed up on reading those initial stories but my curiosity was roused when there were succeeding news about the Philippine street children team winning in their soccer games there. What, a team and winning? I was obviously mistaken in concluding that the first stories were about street children being sent to watch the 2010 World Cup, which is scheduled in June. And so I clicked on and read.
What I found (www.streetchildworldcup.org) was a wonderful story of global cooperation, generosity, and hope. And our team won what I believe to be the equivalent of 3rd place, beating host team South Africa! Now that’s a feat for a team of street children who come from a country dotted with improvised basketball courts everywhere and competing against groups from such countries where makeshift soccer fields are more the norm.
And interestingly, the Philippine page on that website quotes Manny Pacquiao commending the initiative! Now I think Pacquiao would be a good party-list representative in Congress for the sports sector, particularly our marginalized athletes, rather than aiming to be a district representative. Ok, party-lists — what are all these preposterous developments going on, with the President’s congressman son as the representative of the party-list group for security guards? What a big joke to Philippine politics and a callous insult to security guards! But let’s leave that for another time.
Let me go back to tsismosa mode on my soccer fanatic neighbors while I enjoy my warm samosas and rissois.
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