A peek into the Managers' Meeting before the Sri Lanka-Philippines July 3 match

A managers' meeting between the two teams always precedes the pre-match press conference. This is where they discuss all the guidelines for the match from the official training sessions, media access control, security, audience traffic & management, list off prohibited items, medical facilities, the match rules and the uniforms. The match commissioner pours through all the details. Nothing is left to chance. Everything must be discussed from extra time to injury time. The match commissioner is Manirul Islam of Bangladesh while Malaysian Selearajen Subramaniam is the referee assessor. The referee is Sang Woo Kim of South Korea. Assistant referees are also from South Korea -- Jun Mo Jang, Kwangyeol Yoon, Hyungjin Ko.  

All the different committees either present their plans or what is being done while some -- such as media -- is discussed by the Match Comm with particular heads. In this case, for media, it's me. It's been tiresome and at times stressful but I have to say that I have been having a lot of fun with it (muchos gracias, Bonnie). MCd the pre-match press con and will do the same for the post-match press con tomorrow. I won't be able to do any writing for my newspaper until after the post-match press conference. 

The teams present their uniforms from the kits to the socks to the alternate kits. Everything is listed down and when the referee inspects teams the following day, he expects everyone to abide by what was discussed. Sri Lanka will be wearing white for the match (check it out on the table). What is being displayed is goalkeeper Manjula Fernando's jersey.

Here's a pic of all the persons involved. I'm taking pics so obviously I'm not sitting down. My chair is to the right of PFF Technical Head Aris Caslib. 

The Azkals' liaison officer Ace Bright presents the kits for tomorrow. Take a gander at the gold numbers on the blue unis. Pretty spiffy, huh? And the white kit isn't so bad. Got my blues but not the whites (yet).