Building a professional sports team from scratch is no laughing matter. There are so many things to consider such as personnel, logistics, financing and most importantly, competitiveness.
Here in the Philippines, corporations form basketball and volleyball teams to compete in commercial leagues for advertising purposes.
However, one club chose to go the opposite direction in a sport which is seen has grown considerable in the last seven years yet is still considered the least popular when pitted against basketball and volleyball.
That team is Ilocos United Football Club which plays in the newly-formed Philippines Football League.
“I came here and looked at the potential which I think is phenomenal,” shared Ilocos United’s English CEO Tony Lazaro who came as part of a consortium which formed the team from scratch.
“A hundred million people here, fifteen million overseas, the Philippines is everywhere.”
Not only did Lazaro and his business partners choose football, they also selected to base their team in one of the Philippines’ provinces which is a far cry of forming a franchise and putting it in Metro Manila where venues, sponsors and athletes tend to be based at.
In a sense, Ilocos United may have been born this year but its conception was on July 26, 2016 when the Philippine Azkals lost 0-2 against Australia A-League side Perth Glory in front of thousands of fans at the Quirino Stadium in Bantay, Ilocos Sur. Regardless of the result, the game proved that provinces such as Ilocos deserved to have a team which it can call its own.
The Englishman narrated, “We chose Vigan because of the historical success of the Perth Glory game last year. We chose Vigan because there isn’t entertainment out there. It’s really a tourism place.
“We chose Vigan because it has a huge amount of football fans… They’re slowly coming out of the woodwork and when they do Vigan or Ilocos United, the strength of it will be its fanbase.”
Local government support was lauded by Lazaro who also cited one crucial aspect as to how the club and endear itself with its home fans.
“It has a stadium which the people are allowed to enter and exercise in. We train everyday and a lot of the time people are walking around the stadium looking at us, stopping and asking for autographs,” noted Lazaro.
“There’s a real engagement there.”
Lazaro called football a universal language throughout the world and stated the he and his colleagues felt it was fundamental for them to help spread the word in the country.
“Whilst (football) is here in a small way, in order for it to be here in a big way it needs to be more affordable, certainly more commercialized, and to a certain extent more attainable to the provinces,” expounded Lazaro.
A month has passed since the PFL started and Ilocos has yet to get its maiden win. The north-based club has already suffered three defeats against the likes of Meralco-Manila, Kaya-Makati and JPV-Marikina with its solitary point coming against the Davao Aguilas on its first game.
Not that Lazaro was worried.
“I believe we are certainly a formidable team at the moment.
“Next year, we will become stronger because we will attract and have already attracted players. It won’t be three, four years we’re still in this position. Three or four years we will be a strong force in this country,” promised the entrepreneur.
There are still so many questions as to how Ilocos and the PFL itself will thrive in the next few years. Lazaro hopes that the country will grant the league patience for it to succeed as well as a new hero to banner the sport just as the likes of Chieffy Caligdong and the Younghusband brothers did so in years past.
Perhaps Philippine football is already at the point of no return where it could either sink or swim given the enormous tide. What matters now, however, is that there is a club such as Ilocos and figures like Lazaro who want to make sure that it floats.
