CHICKENPIE.The tournament started June 12. The Philippines was not playing. This has never stopped anyone.
By kickoff of the opening match, every sari-sari store within four hundred meters of a working television had become an international embassy. One corner owned France. The next owned Brazil. The corner across the street was full of Argentines — Filipinos who became Argentines in 1986 and have been processing the 2014 final ever since, each of them personally.
Nobody picked Qatar. That is a clean record. We should be proud.
This is the thing about the Philippine World Cup experience: we are the most loyal fans of nations that have never once mentioned our names, and the most personally devastated when those nations fall short. We grieve for countries that are not aware we are grieving. The Brazilians went back to sleep after the final whistle. We had 7am shifts and still couldn’t close our eyes.
There is a guy in Mandaluyong who supports Spain during day matches and Germany during night matches, and he has worked out a philosophical position on this that he would defend with a diagram if you gave him the chance. His wife owns Brazil. His mother owns Argentina. The household has a seating chart. They use it.
We don’t have a national team in this tournament. We have seven. Some households have internal disagreements that have escalated to not speaking during meals, and everyone knows exactly why, and no one is backing down.
The Azkals played their last qualifier in April. The group chat gave them a heart react and moved on.
This is not indifference. This is the opposite of indifference. We have been watching this tournament since we were eight years old on cement floors in borrowed living rooms, absorbing the grief of countries whose languages we do not speak, whose capitals we have not visited, whose national anthems we sang into the dark anyway. Badly. Fully.
Knockouts start this week. Penalty shootouts at 2am on a work Wednesday.
We will be there.
We are always there.
We just always walk away before someone gets to lift the trophy.
