MANILA, Philippines: The Philippine men's national football team faces a tall task as it battles Iraq in the FIFA World Cup/ Asian Cup qualifiers at the Rizal Memorial Stadium on Tuesday evening, March 26.
Other than being 80 notches higher than the Filipinos in the world rankings (139-59), momentum is also on the Iraqis side after winning their last encounter against the Filipinos, 1-0, at their turf in Basra.
The pressure is double for the Pinoy booters as they need to win to strengthen their chances of making it to the next round of the qualifiers.
Fortunately, the national booters, formerly carrying the moniker 'Azkals', are playing at home and head coach Tom Saintfiet hopes for a jampacked and boisterous home crowd in the 7 p.m. match.
"Playing there [in Iraq] was not easy, 60 to 65 thousand fully-packed stadium so playing at home, hopefully we have a packed stadium, we would like to give our fans something to celebrate. Hopefully, we get pushed by the thousands of people in the stadium," said the Belgian coach in the pre-match presser on Monday evening.
"It was a fantastic atmosphere in [Iraq] but we preferred it was 65,000 people from the Philippines in there. Tomorrow, it will always be an advantage. It's our grounds, players are used to play in the pitch. It's our climate, players are used to playing in the climate and it's our crowd who will cheer for us."
The Philippines is at the bottom of the Group F standings with one point and a -3 goal difference (GD) on a one draw and two-loss record, needing to make the top two to advance to the third round of the qualifiers.
Iraq leads the four-country group with nine points on a 3-0 slate with a +9 GD. Indonesia is second with four points on a 1-1-1 win-loss-draw record while Vietnam is third with three points on a 1-2 win-loss card.
"Hopefully, the stands are looking blue. We will play in blue so come out in blue, I would say once more. I think it will be an advantage but we know we play a tough opponent, 0-1 so it won't be easy but if we have that little extra with 12,000 people. We will play with 12,000 against 11 of Iraq and that's an advantage," said Saintfiet.
A crowd of 12,000 people watching the men's national football team is not as far-fetched as it sounds given that the average crowd that the Pinoy booters had last November in their game against Indonesia and Vietnam is 10,129.
Amani Aguinaldo, who plays the defender position, stressed that playing in front of a huge crowd would spell a difference.
"We just have to be more focused. We considered a goal in the dying minutes of the game and we don't want that to happen again so as much as possible we want to keep a clean sheet and hope for the best against Iraq because now it's a different game, we're not playing against their team in front of 65,000 fans. We're playing at home with our fans so it's a different game."
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