Aly, Schrock draw away-game ban

MANILA, Philippines - The Azkals, in high spirits following an emphatic 4-0 rout of Sri Lanka Sunday, suffered a stinging setback after the Asian Football Confederation competition committee yesterday announced the suspension of skipper Aly Borromeo and Fil-German Stephan Schrock in the away leg of the Philippine-Kuwait World Cup Asia second round qualifier.

The duo’s two yellow cards in the two-leg duel with Sri Lanka and automatic one-game ban will be carried over into the second round of the qualifiers, meaning they won’t be around when the Azkals take on the fancied Kuwaitis on July 23.

“It’s a big hole in our midfield that the coaching staff has to plug in,” said PFF president Nonong Araneta.

Coach Michael Weiss said they would likely make use of Fil-Danish Jerry Lucena and Fil-Icelandic left back Ray Jonsson, who missed the Sri Lanka series but are expected to rejoin the team, to cover the midfield possibly with Fil-Dutch Paul Mulders.

“It’s a handicap but we’re Azkals and we’re used to deal with difficult situations,” Weiss said.

Officials are well aware that even with a full complement, the Azkals will face a tall order against Kuwait.

Despite their romp over Sri Lanka, officials admitted there’s still much to be done to reach the status of a real regional contender.

“We always believe in the potential of this team,” team manager Dan Palami said after his crew shut out Sri Lanka, 4-0, at the Rizal Memorial Stadium last Sunday to complete a 5-1 aggregate win in the home-and-away first-round series and reach preliminaries’ second round for the first time in history.

“We’re saying this is the strongest ever team assembled but we couldn’t show this in the first leg in Sri Lanka which ended in 1-1, largely because of our problem with the pitch condition there. But here we flaunted the team’s potential, how different they are from the old long balls way of play; today we have combination ball up front plus strength in midfield,” Palami said.

Higher-ranked Kuwait (102nd in the world) is up next for the Azkals (159th) on July 23 in Kuwait and back to the Rizal pitch on July 28. And team officials said they should raise their level of play several notches higher if they want to have a chance against the Kuwaitis.

“It’s going to be a different game altogether,” said Palami. “They’re a much stronger team. The lapses in defense that we had that Sri Lanka couldn’t take advantage of earlier, I’m sure a team like Kuwait will easily punish us for those.”

Weiss said the Azkals’ fiery performance in their disposal of the Brave Reds before 13,000 adoring fans was good enough against a side like Sri Lanka but surely wouldn’t do for a more established rival.



“It’s okay but it was not perfect. An opponent like that (Sri Lanka), you have to beat them terribly and we didn’t do that. That’s because cohesion is not yet there and we didn’t play as smartly as we should have,” he said.

“A clever team really beats its opponents seven, eight goals. Without being arrogant, that was possible today,” he added, blaming the strikers’ tendency for “selfish quibbling.”

“We will become much, much better if we leave alone selfish quibbling from the strikers. The thing is, with better opposition, we will not be able to go through 3-4 defenders because they will break the selfish players down easily,” he said.

On the other side, Weiss noted a deficiency in switching from offense to defense, how the Azkals were a little bit slow coming back.

“We have to work on that,” said the German mentor, whose crew is set to hold a training camp in Bahrain in the middle of the month to play against that nation’s U-23 team and acclimatize to the Middleeast conditions before going to Kuwait City for the away match.

Olmin Leyba, Philippine Star