Azkals meet Bahrain's Olympic team in 2nd friendly match

The Philippine men's national football team will seek to gain the upper hand past midnight Monday in the second match of the First Bahrain-Philippines Football Friendship Games on Muharraq Island in the Persian Gulf. Over the weekend, the Azkals, as the national team is more popularly known, proved they can hustle and score on the pitch despite the 40 degree Celsius Bahrain weather. The lone goal of the Azkals came from co-captain and striker Emelio "Chieffy" Caligdong in the last minutes of the first half. Bahrain's Under-23 Olympic team won the test match with two goals. Aside from Caligdong, coach Michael Weiss's starting line-up consisted of goalkeeper Eduard Sacapano, Aly Borromeo, James Younghusband, Anton del Rosario, Manuel Ott, Patrick Hinrichsen, Jason de Jong, Yannick Tuason, James Hall, and Roel Gener. Nate Burkey, Ian Araneta and Jose "OJ" Porteria were sent in later as substitutes. Hall was an attacking midfielder in Everton FC of the Premier League in England while Porteria is a Filipino-American from DC United Academy in Virginia in the United States. Borromeo and del Rosario picked out Porteria from among the Fil-Am players who showed up at try-outs in Daly City, California last April. Hall is from Glasgow, Scotland. His mother, Lori Alonte Garrucho Hall is from Bacolod, Negros Occidental while his father is James Hall Sr., from England. In the coming days, the Azkals and the Philippine Football Federation await word from the Asian Football Confederation on the status of their appeal on the one-game suspension of Borromeo and Stephan Schrock. Filipinos in Bahrain, Kuwait Some 5,000 Filipino spectators cheered and chanted from the grandstand of the Bahrain National Football Stadium, according to the Gulf Daily News. Filipina-Bahraini Zoei Al-Shaikh as Dimples_426 relayed to the Philippines via mobile phone her minute-by-minute account match to Filipino fans following her every Tweet on the microblogging site Twitter. "Bahrain is a very strong team and it is good the Azkals played against them! They need to face every kind of team to get stronger," Dimples_426 said in a tweet. "A lot of Filipinos here!! Everyone is very proud but are complaining about how not coordinated they were." From Bahrain, the Azkals proceed to Kuwait, where thousands of Filipino expatriates are waiting eagerly for their arrival and the match with the host country's national team, according to a "24 Oras" report of GMA News' Mark Salazar all the way from Kuwait.
For the latest Philippine news stories and videos, visit GMANews.TV The first leg of the Round 2 home-and-away series between the Philippines and Kuwait will kick off at 7:30 p.m., July 23 (1:30 am, July 24, Manila time) at the Mohammed Al Hamad Stadium in Kuwait. The second leg will be on July 28, Thursday at the Rizal Memorial Track and Football Stadium. Bleacher tickets for that home match of the Azkals were sold out Saturday morning according to sales clerks at Ticketworld outlets. http://www.gmanews.tv/story/226483/sports/day-of-long-lines-for-filipino-sports-fans Local organizing committee chairman Bonnie Ladrido told GMA News Online Sunday that he is waiting for confirmation from Ticketworld on the status of the tickets sold. The online facility of Ticketworld has been unable to process requests for tickets since Saturday evening. — BC/VS, GMA News