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.
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