BLEACHERS BREW EST. MAY 2006

Someone asked me how my blog and newspaper column came to be titled "Bleachers Brew". It's like this, it's an amalgam of sorts of two things: The bleachers area in the stadium/arena where I used to sit when I would watch baseball, football, and basketball games and Miles Davis' great jazz album Bitches Brew. That's how it got culled together. I originally planned on calling it "The View from the Big Chair" that is a nod to Tears For Fear's second album, Songs from the Big Chair. So there.

Monday, January 16, 2012

Returning the favor (somewhat): Icheon Citizen to play Azkals United for charity


The monument to the Philippines in Kyonggi-do near Seoul, South Korea.

Returning the favor (somewhat): Icheon Citizen to play Azkals United for charity
by rick olivares

Sixty-two years ago, the Philippines sent 7,420 soldiers to join the Allied troops fighting in the Korean War as part of the Philippine Expeditionary Force to Korea (PEFTOK). In order to train for the mountain warfare, PEFTOK trained in the mountains of Marikina, but nothing could prepare them for the brutal winter that awaited them in Korea.

When the fighting ended in 1955, 112 Filipinos died while another 313 were wounded. Sixteen servicemen remain missing in action to this day.

When South Korean side, Icheon Citizen arrives in the morning of Friday, January 20, 2012, for a football charity match the following day, it significance has not been lost on me. Sixty-two years ago, the Philippines went to the Korean peninsula to battle the forces of communism along with 15 other countries and we paid for it in blood and the lives of 112 soldiers.

Weeks after Typhoon Sendong devastated parts of Mindanao, it is the turn of the South Koreans – through this third division team – to help out not by going to war but to play a football charity match for the victims of Mother Nature’s fury.

It’s apples and oranges for sure. But help is help and such is the healing power of football.

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Here is the lineup of Icheon Citizen:
1 Hwang Sae Ha – GK
8 Lim Hyun Woo - MF
9 Moon Joo Won – MF
10 Lee Jin Yong – FW
11 Yang Ji Hoon – FW
12 Ko Sung In – FW
13 Kim Kyung Hwan – DF
14 Park Chun Sin – FW
16 Kim Seung Cheol – FW
18 Park Jin Young – MF
19 Jeong Jun Ho – DF
20 Ko Kyung Joon – DF
26 Ko Jung Han – MF
31 Jin Jae Young – GK
32 Bin Tae Kwan – FW
33 Go Hyun Bok – DF
37 Kwon Hyuk Tae – DF

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Thanks to Art Villasanta for the picture! Check out peftok.blogspot.com. 

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