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STOP me
if you’ve read this before. Of course you have… in my
column two weeks ago and unfortunately, it’s like a
recurring nightmare.
There’s
Tim Donaghy in the news once more saying that he’s ready
to spill the beans on other gambling and other erring
referees. There’s doping in the World University Games,
a competition supposedly for college students. There’s
Noli Eala out as Philippine Basketball Association (PBA)
commish. There’s the terrible and atrocious officiating
in the University Athletic Association of the
Philippines. And now there are allegations of steroid
use in golf and game fixing in a tennis match involving
world No. 4 Nikolay Davydenko and 87th-ranked Martin
Arguello. Nikolay Davydenko! Tennis! Is nothing sacred
anymore? Oh yeah, right. Didn’t we have cheating in
chess recently as well? So I guess I shouldn’t be
surprised. Next you’ll tell me that there’s violence in
ice skating. Oh yeah, I forgot—there’s Tonya Harding.
You’ll
have to pardon me if I’m officially tuning myself out of
all bad sports news. One can only take so much. Where’s
Gary Gnu when you need him? Remember, “No news is good
Gnews?”
Sadly
for every stirring triumph there are many other stories
of corruption and scandals. But I guess one really does
have to go through fire and hardship first before they
triumph. The journey, after all, is everything.
While
sifting through the box scores, match results and print
and online commentary that is part of my daily ritual, a
couple of stories in the last few weeks and days have
struck me and are stuck in my head like a song on my
iPod. They’re not exactly of excessive sugary content
that would make a diabetic jealous. They’re disturbing
when you get right to the details, but at the end of it
all, they offer hope, something that can never be in
short supply in this crazy mad world we live in.
When the
Iraqi national football team beat Saudi Arabia in the
recent Asian Football Cup, I felt it was a most
incredible feat. Imagine, for a team that practices
collectively for only one hour a day because of security
concerns, beating a well-heeled and moneyed Saudi team
is more than a simple David and Goliath story. It’s
redemption against all odds. It’s a ray of sunshine in a
country that seems to have no hope. The Iraqis have no
“name players” who ply their trade in fancied European
clubs. Their captain Younis Mahmoud is the only one who
sees action outside the country (as if playing in Qatar
is deemed huge). They use their talent as a means to get
out of their misery and to represent their country in
spite of all the turmoil wreaked by an ill-conceived
invasion. And for all their exploits on the pitch
(including placing second in the 2006 Doha Asian Games),
the players can’t even fly back home lest they be
murdered.
Football
in Iraq is a horror story like no other. For two decades
before Saddam Hussein was ousted, the Iraqi sports scene
was the personal playground of the dictator’s evil son,
Uday, who tortured players, made them kick cement walls
until their feet were bloodied stumps, and jailed them
after losing matches. As Simon Freeman wrote in his book
Baghdad FC, “I hoped to find heroes who wanted to
save football in Iraq. But I found none. All who defied
Uday were dead.”
When
they made their spectacular run in the Athens Olympics,
it showed the healing power of the sport in a war-torn
country. Even with their victory in the Asian Cup, no
rise in FIFA’s rankings (currently at No. 80) will
assuage their fears and feelings. Not while their
country is on the brink of total anarchy.
And
speaking of anarchy, who would have thought that the
grainy and wobbly footage of women about to be executed
would spark a revolution both in their country’s
government and in women’s sports? The clandestinely shot
footage shows three Afghan women brought to a football
stadium in Afghanistan and made to kneel along the
penalty line. One by one they were shot and killed as
the crowds cheered their Taliban assailants. The footage
was smuggled out of the country and is one of the West’s
few documented atrocities of the Taliban. It was used as
a part of the BBC documentary titled Behind the Veil,
a glimpse of the horror of the repressive Taliban regime
before their ouster by American forces following the
events of 9/11. It’s a heroic piece of reporting by
Afghan-British correspondent Saira Shah who traveled
with undercover life in the post-Soviet pullout. It
depicted the secret lives of women who fought the
fundamentalist government by providing home education
and cottage industries as a means of empowerment and
fighting a government of monsters.
Now
several years after the Taliban were overthrown, a part
of the boon of that resistance that is the Afghan
women’s football team will play their first-ever
football match against
Pakistan
in Islamabad. The team’s coach, Abdul Saboor Walizadah
says that at first, the girls’ families didn’t want them
playing football. Now they’re all comfortable with it.
Their problem now is the lack of a venue for suitable
training. The net effect on Afghan society is telling.
Hundreds of women have now taken up a variety of sports
including boxing and taekwondo not just for recreation
but also for Olympic competition.
On the
local front, a friend of mine, Ed Formoso, the PR
Officer of the Philippine Football Federation, is
engaged in Gawad Kalinga’s football program. Together
with the Women’s National Team coach Marlon Maro, they
go about organizing football seminars in GK Villages for
kids. It’s an incredible sight to see these young boys
in basketball sneakers and gear playing the beautiful
game and enjoying it. These kids, in turn, become
instructors in their own villages where they pass on
their knowledge to their peers. I was able to talk to
several of these young coaches and their thirst for
knowledge about the game is great. Despite the lack of a
domestic professional league that would surely boost the
sport, the kids know one thing is for sure… the game is
also about changing perceptions, opening opportunities,
and if we’re all very lucky, healing the world. In a
recent tournament against some of the top footballing
schools in Metro Manila, the GK team made it to the
finals where they lost in a penalty shootout.
Faces in
the crowd:
Dallas Cowboys quarterback Tony Romo as he tries to
bring back a talented team back in the playoffs after
his infamous fumble in last year’s postseason. Go, Tony!
For
baseball fans, Actor John Turturro delivers a masterful
performance as the late New York Yankees skipper Billy
Martin in ESPN’s The Bronx Is Burning
mini-series. It’s a behind-the-scene look at a most
fascinating year in
New York
that is 1977. The city was gripped in a myriad of events
such as the hunt for the serial killer dubbed as the Son
of Sam, a citywide blackout that resulted in arson and
looting, a financial crisis that besieged Mayor Abe
Beame, and there were the Yankees who gave the city a
ray of hope. When I watch the footage dating from the
previous 1976 playoffs where Chris Chambliss’s home run
sent the Bronx Bombers into the World Series after more
than a decade-long drought (where they ultimately fell
to the Cincinnati Reds) all the way to that spectacular
October 1977 where Reggie Jackson cemented his legacy, I
get goose bumps. I was a kid then who was into the
Philadelphia 76ers (who lost the NBA Finals to
Portland), the New York Cosmos (who won the NASL title),
and the Yankees (who won their 21st World Series) and it
forever made me into a sports fan. |
