Cast is complete for Suzuki U-23 Cup quarterfinals

This appears in the Tuesday May 3, 2011 edition of the Business Mirror.

Cast is complete for Suzuki U-23 Cup quarterfinals

by rick olivares

The cast is complete for the quarterfinals of the PFF Suzuki Under-23 National Cup. After weeks of grueling cluster and regional competition, the top two teams from Luzon, Visayas, Mindanao, and the National Capital Region will simultaneously do battle in two separate group stages from May 6-10, 2011 for the four seats to the semis of the first major national football tournament in years.

Panaad Stadium will be the venue for the group of Visayas’ top seed Bacolod, NCR Team 2, Mindanao second placer Dipolog, and Luzon topnotcher, Masbate.

The University of the Philippines-Los Baños pitch will be the site for the other group that includes host and Luzon second placer Laguna; Mindanao overall leader Davao; NCR 1, and Visayas’ number two seed, Iloilo.

The tournament has an added importance aside from being the first national competition in over four years. The PFF hopes to find gems among the competing teams who will beef up the country’s Under-23 national team that will compete in the Southeast Asian Games in Palembang, Indonesia later this year.

The current senior team has few players who are eligible to compete in arguably the Asean region’s most prestigious football competition.

National Team head coach Michael Weiss and National Team Manager Dan Palami will be overseeing the team’s campaign in Indonesia.

Current national players seeing action in the tournament include NCR’s Yannick Tuason and David Basa, and Dipolog’s Jerry Barbaso. And there are numerous players seeing action in college tourneys such as the NCAA and UAAP as well as the United Football League.

Said Suzuki Philippines PR Officer Eilleen Esteban, “Suzuki hopes to be a long term partner in the development of football here in the country. If we are able to strengthen our national team and in our growth as a footballing nation then it’s a worthy investment.”

In the meantime, the National Capital Region Football Association (NCRFA) announced the lineups to its two squads that will compete in the PFF Suzuki Under-23 National Cup.

NCR Team A will be coached by De La Salle University’s Hans Smit and Far Eastern University’s Rodolfo Alicante while NCR Team B will be handled by the University of the Philippines’ Anto Gonzales who himself is a former Azkal who played alongside Phil and James Younghusband and Chris Greatwich.

With Hans Smit and Rolly Tulay in the picture below.

Anto Gonzales and Frank Muescan celebrate UP's second UAAP Men's Football title in three years.