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Payatas FC set to unveil a Futsal Court Of Dreams

Bob Guerrero

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Payatas FC set to unveil a Futsal Court Of Dreams
The Fairplay for All Foundation's upcoming 5-a-side court aims to use football to transform the lives of urban poor.

MANILA, Philippines – It’s nothing more than an empty lot just off the Litex road in AMLAC village in Payatas, Quezon City. Just up the hill from the vast dumpsite, the property is bordered by a low cinder block wall on one end, and another concreted site on the other, where buses sometimes park.

The earth beneath it has been freshly compacted. Although concrete will soon be poured in, the court will eventually be a place where football, and a better life for the children of Payatas, will bloom.

In a few months this will become the Payatas Sports Center, the home court of Payatas FC, the club connected to the Fairplay for All Foundation. Roy Moore from FFA says the land they have purchased already is about 21.5 meters by 26 meters large, enough for recreational play. FFA acquired the land with the generous help of IT company DTSI, Ortigas and Co., and StraightArrow, a process outsourcing firm. The foundation intends to also purchase two adjoining lots that will roughly double the size of the property.

Once the court gets that big, a proper regulation 20m by 40m futsal court can be laid on it. But Moore says most of the time it can be subdivided into 4 smaller courts for futsal, badminton, or even basketball as an income-generating venture.

(Futsal, or futbol de sala, is 5-a-side soccer, usually played indoors on a smooth surface. It is theoretically a different game than football, although it is also governed by FIFA, and is considered to be an excellent developmental tool for young players hoping to master the 11-a-side game.)

The surface of the court will initially be concrete, but Moore plans to explore rubberizing the court or laying in plastic futsal tiles. He even broaches the possibility of building a roof on the court or even walling it and making it into an indoor facility with a second floor. Anything’s possible, as long as funding can keep coming in.

Payatas FC has joined numerous competitions over the past few years. Recently they participated in the Gawad Kalinga futsal league. They also produced players for the Philippine teams at the Street Child World Cup in Brazil in 2014, where the girls team finished second.

Lately, though, without a place to train, the Payatas FC players are restless. One of them is 18-year old Ronalyn, a eleventh grader who was a part of the Philippines Street Child World Cup team.

Ronalyn, (FFA prefers to withhold the family names for security reasons), like many of the neighborhood kids, grew up in very trying circumstances. She missed some education in grade school to help work to make ends meet. Ronalyn recalls having to wash scavenged plastic for resale as a child.

Ronalyn and her Payatas team mates have tried kicking around on Payatas’ dusty streets, but it isn’t the same as playing on a proper court or pitch.

“Minsan pagsipa ng bola nasasagasaan ng truck, o napupunta sa bubong. O minsan tumatama sa side mirror ng kotse.”

(Sometimes when we kick the ball it will get run over by a truck or go on a roof or hit a car’s side mirror.)

As she is interviewed, Ronalyn kicks around a ball on the walls of the Fairplay for All Foundation center. She says she hopes to play university-level football in a UAAP school, where she could be a threat to make a national youth, or even senior team. Ronalyn scored several goals in the Street Child World Cup, including a hat trick against South Africa.

If all goes to plan, Ronalyn and her mates will be playing on the court over the summer. Moore sees the court and the team as only part of a holistic effort to alleviate the grinding poverty that is emblematic of the Payatas area.

Moore is taking a masters degree in Political Science in UP Diliman. He can easily launch a detailed, statistics-backed diatribe on the pernicious structural issues that leave communities shackled to poverty.

“If you’re only tackling the symptoms than you’re not going to change anything,” says the Englishman.

FFA is taking a 3-pronged approach to making a difference by focusing on nutrition, education, and sport. The foundation has a cafe that sells nutritious and inexpensive food. On the roof of the cafe basil, mint, and oregano are grown hydroponically, as well as tilapia.

Just down the road is a newly-established alternative school that is democratically run. The students make their own rules, determine what to study and decide on projects as well. And then there is the football club.

Moore says they have roughly one hundred footballers in Payatas. By the end of the year, with the court, he thinks he can have thrice that number. With nary a bat of his long blonde eyelashes, Moore believes he could have a thousand kids playing the Beautiful Game in a couple of years.

“We’ve been at full capacity,” he says of the club. “The demand for football is there.”

But more than just keeping kids away from drugs and bad influences, Payatas FC aims to also become an incubator for high-level football talent.

“You can produce elite youth players with a futsal court,” asserts Moore. “You don’t need more than that. The big clubs are not the best academies, they’re the best scouting networks, so they cherry pick the best players from the community teams around them. Sure they develop them, but the players didn’t start with Ajax, Barcelona, Southampton, etc. They were already elite youth level when they got there.

“Players don’t need to join academies to be the best youth players. A futsal court playing with their mates is enough well into their teens. With the right coaching and freedom of course.”

Freedom is an important point. Slowly it is becoming an article of footballing faith that unsupervised recreational play is key to a young player’s development. Coaching is important, but so are friendly kickarounds to stimulate a footballer’s imagination and creativity sans the straitjacket of a coach on the sidelines. 

Moore has also crunched the numbers and says that having just one futsal court in a community is roughly equivalent to 500 one-day football festivals in terms of game experience, a crucial element of a player’s development.

The club’s efforts are already starting to bear fruit. Ronalyn is already getting interest from some university programs. No doubt some of her other team mates are also being eyed.

Ronalyn admits that she cannot think too far into her future at the moment. “Gusto ko lang maglaro,” (I just want to play), she intones with a shy smile. Soon, with a court just minutes away from her home, she will be able to do just that, as often as she pleases.

The Fairplay for All Foundation is still seeking donors to raise money for the purchase of the adjoining land for the sports center. If you are interested in contributing, please email ffafoundation@gmail.com. You can help out Fairplay For All Foundation by donating via this link. You can also like FFA’s Facebook page here

Follow Bob on Twitter @PassionateFanPH– Rappler.com

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