Looking at Kuwait

This article appears in the Friday July 22, 2011 edition of the Business Mirror.

Looking at Kuwait

by rick olivares

KUWAIT CITY -- When the Philippine Men’s Football National Team arrived in Kuwait City last Tuesday evening, a few members of the team walked outside the Gulf Road to marvel at the sprawling and full-modern Middle Eastern city.

“It’s beautiful, nice, and clean,” quipped the nationals’ Rob Gier. “Way better than anything I expected.”

If Kuwait is modern-city; it was not built in a day. In fact, it was rebuilt in two years.

Following the invasion by neighboring Iraq in 1990, Kuwait by virtue of its rich oil fields and offshore accounts was able to rebuild their war-damaged country into the modern megapolis of 3.2 million people. By contrast, Singapore has almost double Kuwait’s population yet is smaller in land area by about one-third of the gulf state.

A Filipino migrant worker who has lived in Kuwait for over two decades opined that if the country worshiped money before, post-invasion, they now look at life differently and have joined hands to work together for the prosperity of their country.

One aspect that has threaded itself into the modern fabric of Kuwaiti life is sports.

Sports tourism has taken root in this country. Sports as diverse as boating, falconry, horse racing, martial arts, and yachting have become popular. But the one sport where the whole nation rises as one is football.

Their national team is ranked #102 by FIFA. The Kuwaiti Premier League, the top-flight league of the country’s football pyramid system, has been around for 50 years and has eight pro clubs. Fourteen clubs have participated in the KPL that also uses the relegation-promotion system. And there are more than 120 football pitches situated around the 6,880 square miles that make up Kuwait.

In 2011, Kuwait qualified for the Asian Cup Finals for the ninth time in their footballing history after they finished as Group  B runners-up to Australia. With the upcoming Asian Qualifiers 2014 World Cup match against the Philippines, Kuwait hopes to duplicate their past success. In 1982, the gulf coast country entered the group stages but were lumped with Iran, Syria, and the United Arab Emirates. Al-Azraq ended up last in its group and closed out their campaign with a 2-nil loss to Iran.

Rod Cerezo, a Filipino who has been a longtime resident of Kuwait said that as much as he knows that basketball is the Philippines’ national sport, here in Kuwait, even the Pinoy expats come out to watch when Al-Azraq plays. “But when they play the Philippines, we will be cheering for our own country. And we will fill Qadsiya Stadium (Mohammed Al-Hamad Stadium which is home to current KPL champions Al Qadsiya).”