New RP football website

Unlike in other parts of the world, football or soccer is not the No. 1 sport in the Philippines.

Basketball, fuelled by a novel and effective marketing arm called the PBA, is king in this country, where finding a potential seven-foot talent is like looking for a needle in a haystack.

Children pick up basketballs early, harboring dreams of making it big in the pro league someday. With the lure of big bucks in the PBA, the status quo as far as my memory could summon is basketball at No. 1 with boxing and billiards and now badminton not far behind, while all the other sports battle for the crumbs.

The set-up is perpetuated by local media with newspapers, magazines and television alloting major space for basketball, college basketball, the NBA and everything basketball. There's this basketball channel on cable also, which except for airing home shopping segments for an hour is devoted to basketball.

The PBA is already part of Filipinos' way of life. One does not need to be a die-hard basketball fan to help the league. All the teams are named and owned by consumer brands, thus its consumer cash that keeps the league running.

The fact remains though that basketball is not the sport for Filipinos. We remain the best team in Southeast Asia but judging from our ninth place finish in the Fiba-Asia championships, we are falling behind our Asian neighbors. And our Olympic dream remains as it is: a dream.

We reached the Olympics in 1972 when there were no Yao Mings, Yi Janlians, Michael Jordans Kobe Bryants or Lebron James.

So okay, enough of my basketball rant and back to the original purpose of this post: to introduce the new philippine football website. The website is a far cry from the previous one philfootball.info, which I do not want to link because clicking it will only lead you to a picture of a woman looking at her laptop.

The best feature of the previous website is its forum. There, football fans converge and discuss anything about football. In the absence of tv coverage, it was the forum which provided the gamecast of some games of the men's national team in Bacolod during the SEA Games and the Asean Football Championships.

I also relied on the forum to pick up leads on stories. I marveled at comments of some forum members, some of whom really have a point and worth listening to. Some lamented the sad state of the sport in the country and offered solutions or alternatives. Some bashed Johnny Romualdez, the Philippine Football Federation president, for his poor leadership. While everyone was united in hailing the Askals' victories. There I met people who show genuine concern for football.

If only Mr. Romualdez was reading the comments.

Apart from the old PFF website, there's pinoysoccer.com which became the unofficial news portal of the sport. Alain Escalante runs the site.

I understand the new site is taking its first few steps. But it isn't an excuse to mislead people online. Their is no international football match for the Philippines in the coming weeks whatsoever but the website shows some sort of a calendar of national team fixtures. Another thing is the lead story in the site: RP beats Cambodia, 4-2, in SEAG group play. This story is close to two years old. What was more appaling was the fact that my story about West Negros College winning a tournament in Barotac was the content of that old RP-Cambodia headline story.

I already texted Vince, the philfootball administrator, to inquire about this. He has yet to reply.

Reinventing the website is a good move. But doing it half-baked again raises some doubts on the sincerity of the PFF.