Football is popular in Cebu. This I learned the past 36 hours. When I entered the Cebu City Sports Center last Friday night, hundreds of pairs of spiked shoes and knee-high socks greeted my eyes. Yesterday morning, it was the same soccer-frenzy sight: girls kicking, boys sprinting towards the steel goal, coaches shouting, goalies jumping [...]

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My brother Charlie Pages took these pictures during the 5th Thirsty Cup two years ago….

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An article I wrote two years ago….
Football is the No.1 sport in my daughter’s school, Bright Academy. It’s no. 1 in Don Bosco. In CIS. In Springdale. In Sacred Heart School-Jesuit. Football is the No.1 sport in Asia. In South America. In Germany, Spain, England, France and even in a remote and tiny municipality in [...]

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HONG KONG—Scanning the sports sections of the two leading English newspapers here, South China Morning Post and China Daily, as I did the past week, one will find that Hong Kong’s five most popular sports are: Number one, soccer. No. 2: the sport with 11 players per team on-field. Three, the game whose favorite Sun.Star [...]

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I don’t follow soccer like Sun.Star Cebu sports editor Mike Limpag and Sun.Star columnist Noel Villaflor do, but when I saw this video in the blog of Manila-based writer Rick Olivares (Bleacher’s Brew), I couldn’t help but watch in amazement. If only Zidane did the same in the 2006 World Cup….

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I was born in the land of La Paz batchoy and the Pancit Molo. A city where, before dining, residents utter the lines, “kaon ta-e!” “kaon ta bala” or “kaon ta anay!”
Iloilo City, it’s named, and, as a child, I have fond memories of lighting up fireworks on Dec. 31 or trekking on a bike [...]

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Today, September 28, is a special day for our friend in Australia, Graeme Mackinnon. He’s celebrating his xxth birthday and his 20th wedding anniversary! Here are a few photos of the football star…

It’s 1963 and Graeme’s working out at the gym with his dad

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(Eric Gay/AP)
You know why I love sports so much? Five words: YOU NEVER KNOW THE ENDING. You don’t. You never do. A $220 million blockbuster movie will telegraph it’s ending midway through the story while a New York Times bestselling novel will snake you through turns and twists and reveal, two-thirds through the 347-pager, that [...]

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Tom Brady. His other name is Matt Damon. They’re twins. They look alike. The only difference is, even if Matt Damon is well-built and can jump from 22-foot-tall buildings like what we saw in “The Bourne Ultimatum,” he’s unlike Tom Brady who towers at 6-foot-4, has graced the covers of GQ Magazine 235,280 times, has [...]

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