It wasn’t as action packed as his previous fights, but he still beat Barrera handily. UD12. If a Youtube clip of the fight comes up, I’ll post it (for as long as it’s available).
A more Filipino-American historical post to come later this week.
Edit: this Youtube user’s channel has all the rounds, I think. Watch it while you can!
Last Wednesday night I was browsing YouTube for any highlights of that week’s Champions League action (the premier European club football competition) when I came upon this clip. (It’s in Catalan I believe, but there’s an English summary in the YouTube comments).
The clip was about Paulino Alcántara, unarguably the greatest Filipino football player of all time. He is the greatest goal scorer in the history of FC Barcelona, having scored 357 goals in 357 matches during his playing days from 1912-1927. Yes, this is the same FC Barcelona that once had such greats like Johan Cruyff, Diego Maradona, Ronaldo, and Luis Figo and currently has Ronaldinho, Samuel Eto’o, Lionel Messi, and Thierry Henry.
He was born in Iloilo on October 7, 1896 and was the first Filipino/Asian player to play in Europe. Here’s an interesting excerpt from Barcelona’s website:
“His ability to hit the most powerful of shots crossed frontiers on the 30th April 1922 when, in a game between Spain and France, he hit a shot so hard that it ripped right through the net. For many years after, children from Barcelona would recall that moment and would wish to do the same as the man from the Philipines.” (Yeah, it was misspelled on the site.)
He retired from football in 1927 to become a doctor. He later became Barcelona’s club director from 1931-1934 and once coached the Spanish national team in 1951. So while the current state of Filipino football is pretty sad, we’ve had good players/national teams long, long ago. Alcantara was the best of them.
Sources:
I’ll do more posts of Filipino historical figures in the future.
If you didn’t get to watch the fight on Saturday, here’s the Pinoy broadcast feed. I couldn’t find Round 2 though.
Rounds 1 and 3
…Top Rank Inc. may force Youtube to take this video down, so watch it while you can!
*cough*www.keepvid.com*cough*
Excerpts from the Associated Press article:
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“Manny Pacquiao gave the home fans plenty to cheer about Sunday, battering Mexico’s Oscar Larios to claim a unanimous decision and retain his WBC International super featherweight title.
In the same arena where Joe Frazier and Muhammed Ali slugged it out in the “Thrilla in Manila” 31 years ago, the 27-year-old Pacquiao repeatedly showed off his speed and power in the 12-round bout, knocking down Larios twice while raising his record to 42-3-2.
“Anybody wants beer, it’s on me,” a jubilant Pacquiao, whose endorsements include beer, told a news conference….
…Hundreds of poor people traveled from afar just to get a glimpse of Pacquiao, who has become a national icon and inspiration due to his rise from poverty, even though they didn’t have tickets.
Vic Mar Echo, a 22-year-old amateur boxer, his knuckles covered with bruises and welts, came from Taytay town, in Rizal province near Manila, with only enough money for transportation.
“He’s my idol,” Echo said. “I want to hold his hands and feel how strong it is.”
The World Cup is going on right now, and in every game there is a tremendous display of national pride of all the nations in the stands and in their home countries. If you don’t know what I mean, just go to youtube and search for “world cup” or “brazil” or “korea” and you’ll see.
So it made me wonder: How did the Philippines fare in attempting to qualify for the World Cup? Do we even have a national football team??
Well…..yes. We do.
The most comprehensive site I could find about Philippine football is this one. there’s also a nice article about Philippine football here.
The latter article states that international football used to be popular in the Philippines:
“…In 1913, when most of Asia probably had not even heard of the game, the Philippines set about creating football history when they organised the first ever Asian international match. Something never to be forgotten, Philippines played China in Manila with the hosts winning the game 2-1. That was the start of a game that would extend to the length and breadth of the Asian continent.
But a change of guard - the Spanish invaders left the islands to the Americans - resulted in the game losing its popularity in its birthplace. Football, instead of becoming the number one sport amongst Filipinos, ended up playing second fiddle to American sports….”
There’s a more in-depth article on the history of Philippine football here.
an excerpt from that article:
“…Meanwhile, SMC protege Juan Cutillas, after leaving the country in 1965, came back a balikbayan doctor in 1968 and started to crowd the football headlines. Armed with a Physical Training diploma from Madrid, a Spanish national coaching license, a doctorate in medicine and a lot of corporate influence, Cutillas literally made football “tsunamis.”
The Spanish doctor steered a spectacular win by a Philippine Selection over a visiting pro team, Dallas Tornadoes, 2-1, in 1968. The former Atletico Madrid midfielder coached the San Beda Red Lions and led them to three consecutive NCAA victories in as many seasons since 1968. From that year on, Cutillas has handled the national football team as coach and other sports as trainer. The only time he did not coach a national team was in ‘73 and ‘74 when he was relieved by Florentino Broce. Cutillas also led the SMC team to five championships in seven PFA tournament stagings.
In 1971, Cutillas, going through with tradition, selected four top-caliber Spanish players and one Chinese to beef up the Philippine Selection. The formula again worked as prestigious tournaments insisted on having them on the field.
Participating in such prestigious events as the Merdeka Invitationals, Pesta Sukan, Indonesia’s Anniversary Cup and the President Park tournament, the Philippine Selection managed to come up with rare feats in beating Thailand, Singapore and mighty Korea. Simply stated, it is Philippine football popularity resurrected.
That’s as far as football has gone in the Philippines. For when the Spaniards Lozano, Cuenca, Gutierrez and Roxas left the football scenario due to lack of funds, basketball went in for the kill as it grabbed the spotlight and the crowd. It’s turning professional in 1974 is but a nail in football’s coffin….”
According to FIFA’s profile of the Philippines here, they didn’t even try to qualify for this year’s Cup.
Some facts from that site:
Despite being the oldest national team in Asia, the Philippines did not take part in preliminaries for a FIFA World Cup until the 1998 tournament. Unfortunately, they have only been able to dream of qualification so far.
In qualifying for Korea/Japan 02, the Philippines finished bottom of a group won by Oman. In six games, they only won a single point in the home game against Laos.
The Philippines, where the Asian Football Confederation was founded on 8 May 1954, celebrated their finest victory back in 1917 with a 15-2 demolition of Japan. Their team will not take part in qualifying for Germany 06.
Oh well. There’s always Pacquiao to cheer for.
BTW, his fight w/ Oscar Larios @ the Araneta Coliseum is on July 2. HBO isn’t covering this, so I don’t know how to watch it yet.
ok, so just as the procrastinating person said in the chis box, the philippines did indeed destroy malaysia in baseball 38-0 in the 23rd southeast asian games (sea games). this was largely due to the philippines scoring twenty-two runs in the second inning. you can read more about it here.
according to the medal count here, at the time of this post the philippines leads all countries with 57 gold medals, 36 silver, and 45 bronze.
now the games are being held in the philippines this year. in 2003 vietnam held the games and came away with the most gold medals (150). the philippines didn’t accuse vietnam of cheating during that year….
so now the philippines is leading in the gold medal count, and the thai premier thaksin had this to say:
“I have been following the SEA Games closely and believe that the Games should exist to help athletes lift their standards…It should not be about winning gold medals…the organizer aims only to favor its own athletes.”
jaruk areerajakaran, secretary-general of thailand’s olympic committee, also had this to say:
“It is hard to win in the Games since the hosts are cheating.”
joey romasanta, spokesperson of the philippine olympic committee, fired back in reply:
“It is premature for the Prime Minister to suggest that we are favoring our athletes. It is too early in the SEA Games. He should not have said that…So far we have had only wu shu and tae kwon do, where human judgment has been involved. But all of you saw how our athlete Criselda Roxas lost to a Thai in the tae kwon do finals Tuesday. So how can we be favoring our own performers?”
more about this here.
since i can’t watch the games from here, i wouldn’t know which side is right. nevertheless, it’s a good thing that the philippines is doing well in these games, which for rather complex reasons (which i can’t go into right now) does not include the most popular sport in the philippines, basketball, this year.
these results may cause one to ask….if the philippines is doing so well in these games, why not the olympics?
the philippines didn’t get a single medal in athens, and have never scored a gold medal in its history (although onyok velasco came close in atlanta).
who will be the first one? when?
first, fight results from saturday…manny ko’d velazquez in 6, and viloria ko’d ortiz in 1 (they only showed the ko on hbo).
i totally forgot to mention rey “boom boom” bautista, the 3rd filipino who fought that saturday. he ko’d his opponent murillo in 3. (unfortunately, i can’t find a pic of him online).
so w/ all of them winning, filipinos everywhere rejoiced…it’s something that’ll lift the spirits of the poor masses amidst the political crisis.
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in other news, there was a good read @ the la times today regarding the current state of historic filipinotown. the article was entitled “filipinotown searching for its center” by wendy lee and can be found here. (registration req. — try using bugmenot).
the article is pretty accurate. i sometimes go through historic filipinotown in my commute home from usc, and it’s pretty much what the article says. any development though imo is going to take a while.
thanks to cher for telling me about the article.
so here’s a couple of links regarding the stuff i mentioned last meeting in the first kuwentong sa kanto segment.
here you’ll see how every member of the philippine house of representatives voted to either pass or reject the impeachment complaints against pres. arroyo.
the “failed to vote” list has pretty big names…
inq7: rp everest team scales peak
read up on the story of filipino mtn. climbers preparing to climb mt. everest in 2007.
maxboxing: pacquiao
maxboxing: viloria
preview articles on both manny and brian’s fights @ staples center this saturday (the 10th).
don’t forget, fpac (festival of philippine arts and culture) this weekend.
go manny!
go brian!
with the mlb all-star game tomorrow, i decided to take a look at the state of philippine baseball today. the info is out there online but a bit hard to find.
philippine baseball has a glorious past. the game was introduced during the u.s. colonial period in the philippines. it was pretty popular in the 30s when the rizal memorial stadium was built.
picture from titansbaseballclub.org.
there was also a renaissance in the 50s when according to this the ny yankees visited the philippines and put on quite a show.
right now, though, it’s pretty bad. basketball is by far the dominant sport in the philippines, and as with all sports over there, funds for training players and building good facilities are far from adequate. when i visited 2 years ago, my cousins loved to talk about the nba w/ me. and during my stay there i heard nothing about the sport of baseball.
my best memory of anything related to philippine baseball is unfortunately a dubious one. i do remember watching the 1992 little league world series on tv w/ my parents when a team from zamboanga city in mindanao crushed the long beach team 14 to 4. some time later though, the philippine team was stripped of their title when it was discovered that the team had players that lived outside of zamboanga city and that were over the age limit. from that point i stopped hearing about the philippines’ participation in little league baseball.
despite all this, however, baseball still thrives among some filipinos. although not too well-known, there are several recreational teams/leagues in the metro manila area and elsewhere. several filipinos have made it to the major leagues, most notably benny agbayani (born in hawaii), most known for his stint w/ the new york mets. another filipino player who made it was one bobby chouinard, although looking at his profile here his career ended on a bad note.
picture taken from here
the above photo is of one bobby balcena, the first known filipino to play in major league baseball. although he didn’t play that much in the majors, he played many years in the minors, specifically in the pacific coast league. he died in 1990.
balcena is the great uncle of current ucla softball player jodie legaspi. this article written in late may gives more detail about both of them.
baseball in the philippines isn’t getting much attention right now, but recently softball did. check this out; a team from bacolod city won the jr. softball world series just 2 years ago.
