I once had this friendly argument with a colleague as to the universal scope of some popular sports. “Football is the world’s most popular sport” I strongly argued.
“No. It’s basketball” he insisted.
Perhaps after thorough research a week after, he backed down from his claim. But he was not alone in his glorification of basketball. Filipinos do love basketball, and most actually thinks that the NBA is bigger than FIFA, and that football is the game played by men with helmets and oversized suits.
See the effects of the American colonizers on us? We call the traditional football soccer (sounds like sucker), just like they call it in the USA, when the rest world call it football. And guess what? The Philippines did not send a football team to the 2007 SEA games because they think we have a very slim chance of winning. So, where is the long-term program they talked about years ago? There was already a faint ray of hope when our world standings improved a few notch higher a couple of years ago.
As for me and the few football fans here in RP, we just have to mingle with the worldwide fans in rooting for the big clubs and the strong footballing nations. Thank God for cable TVs! No local channel carries the beautiful game. And we have no local teams to cheer on.
2 comments:
I think in Southeast Asia, Filipinos are the only ones who love basketball. Here in Cambodia, no one plays basketball except the Filipinos. All sports channels are geared towards football.
and to think that we filipinos are not even basketball kings in Asia. Well, we used to.
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