Rampaging Fullback: The ‘football club vs country’ debate reaches Philipine shores

Chieffy Caligdong sends in a penalty kick. News5/Roy Afable

In the world of football, club versus country problems are fairly common. They happen when clubs refuse to release their players for international duty, citing alleged injuries or club commitments.

In recent years, however, these problems have been addressed by scheduling national team matches within the FIFA International Match Calendar. Clubs are then obligated to release their players for national team duty. Otherwise, clubs are well within their rights to hold on to their players. Being the ones paying the players’ salaries, they naturally want to protect their assets and prevent unnecessary injuries to their stars.

If a national team game is scheduled outside the FIFA calendar, chances are that said game will coincide ongoing club competitions — which is exactly what happened last Saturday, when several members of the Azkals missed the game due to their commitments with their United Football League clubs.

(Let’s skip over the fact that even though it is for noble charitable intentions, playing against a foreign club team for the second time in 15 days would hardly qualify as an “international game.”)

The UFL had two Division One matches scheduled last Saturday, with another two the following day. That rendered some Azkals from those clubs unavailable to compete against Icheon Citizens FC.

Some fans online have said that they have “lost respect” for the UFL, as well as Kaya FC and Loyola Meralco Sparks FC for their refusal to allow their players to play. But to paint the UFL and the teams who refused to release players as the villain is completely erroneous and unfair.

If we are to analyze the whole thing, it would seem that there was a total and utter disregard on the Azkals promoter’s part to even consult with the UFL regarding how best to schedule this charity game. It would even not be a stretch to say that it completely ignored the league when it decided to hold the game at this day.

Consider the facts: The UFL has the rights to play at the Rizal Memorial Football Stadium every Saturday starting January 14, the league’s opening day. It need not take a computer genius to look up the league schedule of the UFL and see that there is a conflict in the scheduling.

What fans need to understand is that the UFL is a serious league, and some consideration for the league’s schedule is the barest minimum of respect that should be accorded to them by the organizers. Not yet known to many, the UFL and its teams will release players for the Azkals’ Dubai training camp in February, in preparation for the team’s campaign in the 2012 Challenge Cup.

That means that these players will miss at least two games in their league fixtures for their mother clubs. The Dubai training camp is not on the FIFA International Match Calendar and yet the UFL, in the spirit of cooperation, will release players for the camp.

The release of players to the Dubai training camp, with prior consultation and preparation with the UFL and its clubs, shows the UFL’s support. The hastily organized “charity game/friendly” with the Korean club arguably is asking for a bit too much.

A lot is at stake in the UFL, and it would be accurate to say that the league will have a lot to influence on the showing of the Azkals in future tournaments, not least because majority of the Azkals are now plying their trade there.

Needless to say, with proper communication and a simple adherence to protocol, all this could have and should have been avoided. The Azkals would not be playing with their B-team, fans would be treated to a complete Azkals line-up and may have packed Rizal Memorial Football Stadium (and generated more revenue for charity) and the UFL would not have been painted in a bad light.

In the club and country debate, country will almost always have the edge in currying public sympathy and opinion. In this particular case, however, the club’s rights should be recognized and respected.

Ryan Fenix is InterAKTV’s resident football analyst. His football column Rampaging Fullback appears exclusively on the site. He runs the football blog The Prawn Sandwich Brigade and covers football for AKTV on IBC. For more football discussion, follow him on Twitter.