FILE–Philippine men’s football team ahead of its match Tajikistan within the 2027 AFC Asian Cup qualifiers. –AFC PHOTO
MANILA–The lads’s football team has qualified for the Aichi-Nagoya twentieth Asian Games in Japan, the Philippine Olympic Committee (POC) announced Monday.
The lads’s football team qualified after India withdrew.
READ: PH men’s football team sets deal with Asean title
Reports said the All India Football Federation withdrew its national team since the squad didn’t meet the Indian government’s strict selection criteria of being ranked throughout the top eight.
The Philippine women’s squad already earned a berth to the competitions scheduled Sept. 19 to Oct. 4. The country is ready to send 443 athletes to the quadrennial games.
The complete delegation, including coaches and officials, could reach 700. Gymnastics continues to be confirming the qualification of 5 athletes in artistic events.
Filipino athletes are competing in 38 of the 47 sports programmed by the Aichi-Nagoya organizers, who set quotas mostly for individual and combat sports due to the hosts’ limited capability to accommodate large delegations.
A record 524 athletes joined the Hiroshima Games (1994) and 391 athletes attended the 2022 edition held in Hangzhou, China.
“The minimum goal is to do higher on the Games,” POC president Abraham Tolentino said in a news release, referring to breaking the 4-2-12 gold-silver-bronze tally in Hangzhou.
Football in Aichi-Nagoya features 16 squads in the lads’s division and 12 in the ladies’s side, with the teams allowed to field 18 to 22 players within the under-23 tournament but with a maximum of only three older players each. (PNA)
Your subscription couldn’t be saved. Please try again.
Your subscription has been successful.