Football in the Philippines
overview of association football in the Philippines
Football in the Philippines is administered by the Philippine Football Federation (PFF), the governing body of football in the country. Around 40 million people in the Philippines, or 35 percent of the population, are football fans.
Football in the Philippines is a sport played at professional and amateur levels across the country. Football has a long and rich history in the islands, dating back to the 1890s, when the British introduced the sport to the Spanish and European settlers living on the islands. The Philippine Football Federation was established in 1907 and it would soon feature several Hispanic Filipino sportsmen that included FC Barcelona, Real Madrid, Real Sociedad, Atlético Madrid and Real Zaragoza legends such as Manuel Amechazurra, Paulino Alcántara, Juan Torena, Eduardo Teus, Marcelino Gálatas and Gregorio Querejeta, who would eventually become the first Filipinos and Asian footballers to play for a professional European club in Spain. Amechazurra was the first to achieve great heights at Spanish football, playing for FC Barcelona and he was followed by Alcántara later on, after also achieving success with the same football club. Alcántara went on to become the youngest Filipino footballer to play in Spain, where he made his professional debut as a striker at the age of 15 for Barcelona, which made him the club's youngest and second highest goal scorer behind Argentinian footballer, Lionel Messi. Since then, the first football teams began to form, including the Manila Sporting Club in 1906, the Sandow Athletic Club in 1909, and the Bohemian Sporting Club in 1910.
To promote and revive the sport, some European and American international football clubs and organizations have helped the Philippines progress through its development, they have included FC Barcelona and Real Madrid from Spain, the United Kingdom, Germany, Sweden, Australia, France, the United States, Argentina and Serbia. FIFA also assisted the country by building and upgrading facilities including the creation of the Philippine Football Federation (PFF) headquarters in 2009.
The public source identifies “Football in the Philippines” as overview of association football in the Philippines. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Football, Philippines and overview.
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This entry incorporates text from “Football in the Philippines” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.