Ceres-Negros FC have dominated the Philippines Football League since its inception in 2017.
But just last July, the club owned by Leo Rey Yanson announced that it was looking for investors to continue the operations, as the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has hit Yanson’s group hard.
A few weeks after the shocking announcement of Ceres, MMC Sportz Asia headed by Eric Gottschalk took over the club and named it United City Football Club.
With the shakeup that left football fans shocked, PFL analysts felt it leveled the playing field for the upcoming 2020 bubble season.
For the first time, there are no clear-cut favorites.
Speaking in Tiebreaker Vods’ Crossover, presented by SMART, Natasha Alquiros, Darren Hartmann, and Nate Burkey discussed the open playing field this coming bubble to be held in Carmona, Cavite starting Wednesday.
With the pandemic shortening the season to just five games per team, Burkey said every game will be very important.
“They’re playing three weeks, five games, where every game they need to acquire three points. I feel every match will be a final, across the board for every game,” he said.
“I feel like it might go down to the very last game, to the very last day. This could very well go to the last day of the competition, which would be interesting because there is no final.”
But ultimately, Hartmann still sees United City winning it all this year.
It won’t be like the previous editions, though, where then-Ceres leads the league by a big advantage.
“I think United City will still win it, but I don’t think it’s gonna be anywhere near as easy. It won’t be the sort of lead that we’ve seen in previous leagues,” said the former Azkal.
“We will see people take points off one another in almost every single game.”
And with the bubble, Alquiros believes that this will be the most exciting PFL tournaments yet.
“This is the most exciting in a sense that it’s not like the previous seasons where Ceres has run away with the points already, there’s a big margin.”
