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Smart PFF National Club Championship: Global and Loyola meet in final again, (sort of)

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Misagh Bahadoran and Richard Talaroc of Global battle with Martin Steuble of Ceres. Image copyright Bob Guerrero.



And we meet again my long-lost friend, once again we get to start anew.”

-Kenny Loggins, “SweetReunion.”


On Saturday, Global and Loyola will clash for the right to call themselves the champions of the Philippines in football when they meet in the Smart-PFF National Club Championship final match at 7pm in Rizal Memorial Football Stadium. This game was set after Global out-played Ceres 3-1 in extra time and Loyola edged Stallion 2-1, also in extra time, in the semifinals round last Thursday.


And as another song goes, it’s all just a little bit of history repeating.


The 2014-2015 Smart PFF NCC is the fourth running of a tournament involving clubs from all over the Philippines. In the very first iteration of the event, two teams met in the final, (which was two-legged then,) who are either similar to this year’s protagonists, or actually the same teams, depending on how you look at things.

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James Younghusband against Manny Ott. Image copyright Bob Guerrero.


The 2011 final featured Smart San Beda, the champs of the Luzon regional championship, against Teknika FC, a team that for sponsorship reasons adopted that name, although they were in fact really Global FC. (Funny things happen in Pinoy football.) Global won 3-2 over two legs. Here are highlights of the second leg, a 2-0 win by SSB, and here is one of Izo Elhabbib’s goals from the first leg.


Global is, in many ways, still the Global of 2011, with the same yellow and blue color scheme and a lot of the same players.


Elhabbib still terrorizes defenses up top. Misagh Bahadoran still creates problems for opponents down the flanks. Yu Hoshide, at 36 is still unspooling heavenly through-balls into enemy territory. Jerry Barbaso’s afro may be clipped and more wavy than curly, but he still hunts down opposing strikers from the right back position.


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What about Smart San Beda? That team name may be long gone, but the stars of that club, Phil and James Younghusband, now form the nucleus of the Loyola Meralco Sparks. (Roxy Dorlas, a proud Bedan like many of that original team, is also a holdover.)


So in a sense, this is a rematch of 2011. And what a rematch it portends to be.


Loyola are looking to put the disappointment of their failures in two recent cups (semifinal exits in the UFL Charity Cup and League Cup,) with a nice piece of silverware to kick off the year. Phil and James seem to be gelling well with new players Adam Mitter on defense, as well as Filipino-English midfielders Charlie Beaton and Jorrel Aristorenas.


On Thursday the Sparks took an eleventh minute 1-0 lead thanks to a deflected Matt Hartmann shot. Three minutes before the half, thanks to some hesitant defending-by-committtee, Loyola allowed Stallion to level thanks to Simone Rota.


But in extra time Phil Younghusband settled matters with a gorgeous free kick goal.


Sparks coach Simon McMenemy seems to have this team humming. On Thursday they trotted out a daring 3-4-3 formation at times. In the group stage of this competition they defeated Ceres 1-0 and came from 1-0 behind to draw Kaya 2-2. The underachieving Loyola of before might just be a thing of the past.


Global stand in their way thanks to a gutty semifinal win against Ceres. Martin Steuble, Ceres’ new Azkal signing, skied a late penalty that would have given the busmen a 2-1 lead. Instead the teams went to extra time, with Global substitute Dennis Villanueva with the go-ahead goal before Mark Hartmann, exploiting a stretched Ceres defense, added a third.


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Ceres looked out of sync in this competition. Manny Ott is unable to affect games like before, and Adrian Gallardo, their superb Spanish striker, has had a tough time finding the back of the net. Keeper Louie Casas has kept them in a few matches with his shot-stopping. In the end, Ceres were helpless to prevent their two-year reign in this competition from ending.


Bedeviling both Global and Loyola will be the crushing fatigue both teams are experiencing thanks to a madcap schedule that will have have had them playing five games in a week and a half. The physiotherapy staffs of both squads will need to work overtime.


“The players won’t even break a sweat in training tomorrow, it will be mostly recovery,” admitted McMenemy to the media after the semifinal win.


James Younghusband missed Thursday’s game thanks to accumulated yellow cards and joked afterwards that he had it all planned as a way to get a day off.


Another subplot is the battle of the Hartmanns, Mark and Matt. In the 2013 UFL Cup semifinal, won by Matt’s Loyola, Matt admitted to being unable to celebrate as wildly because his brother was on the other side. Both scored on Thursday, both will be aiming to frustrate the other on Saturday.


Loyola and Global have duked it out many times over the years, with many of those games very hard-fought. This wild 4-3 win by Loyola in 2012 remains one of my favorites.


McMenemy said when he returned to the Philippines to coach Loyola that he wanted the Sparks to be the standard for excellence in Pinoy club football. On Saturday he will try to live up to that bold claim against an extremely tough and very familiar foe.


There will be no television coverage for the Smart PFF NCC final, so please come to Rizal Memorial at 7pm. There will be a 3rd-medal game between Ceres and Stallion at 4 pm. Admission to both games is free.


Follow Bob on Twitter @PassionateFanPH.