By Kokoy Severino
Philippines vs Indonesia
World Cup Qualifiers, Second Round Group F
Tuesday November 21, 2023
Rizal Memorial Stadium, Manila
7:00 pm
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| Patrick Reichelt (29) chips a cross past Rizky Pora (11) inside the box during the 2014 AFF Suzuki Cup, the one and only Philippines win over Indonesia ever. Reichelt was 26 years old, which was also the average age of the Azkals roster. November 25 will be the 9th anniversary of that victory. Photo by Kokoy Severino. |
Indonesian politics has been known to be quite complex and messy. Since winning a bloody war for independence against Dutch colonizers and their European allies after World War II, they've endured a communist coup attempt, a long brutal dictatorship, separatist movements, a sticky civil-military relationship, tensions between religious and secular sectors...
And on top of all that - local government meddling in the affairs of the country's national football association, the Persatuan Sepakbola Seluruh Indonesia. As a result, FIFA banned Indonesia from international football from May 2015 to May 2016, effectively ruling them out of qualifiers for the 2018 World Cup and 2019 Asian Cup.
For the 2022 World Cup qualifying campaign after they resolved their issues and FIFA lifted the ban, Indonesia hired none other than Simon McMenemy of legendary status to Filipinos. Alas, the Scotsman could not replicate any past historic performances and Indonesia lost five in a row, including every match against their Southeast Asian rivals in the group - Thailand, Vietnam, and Malaysia. Like their politics, Indonesian football was thrown into turmoil. Already eliminated with three matches still left to play, the PSSI fired McMenemy and replaced him with South Korean Shin Tae-yong in November of 2020.
Shin immediately went to work, managing to salvage one point from the remaining three matches. Indonesia ultimately crashed out of the 2022 World Cup Qualifiers at the bottom of the group with a -22 goal deficit.
Shin Tae-yong is one of the most highly-decorated players in K League football history. From the early 1990's to the early 2000's, he scored 99 goals in 403 appearances for Seongnam Ilhwa Chunma, the only club he played for, winning six league championships, five domestic cups, and four international tournaments, including the Asian Club Championship in 1995. He made the K League all-star selection almost every single year he played and won the Most Valuable Player award twice.
As Seongnam manager, Shin won the AFC Champions League in 2010, making him the first person in history to win the continental club championship both as player and as head coach. Later that year, he guided Seongnam to a fourth-place finish at the Club World Cup.
It is evident that Shin's forte is developing young players into a world-class team. He himself was a star youth player, making the South Korean selection at every age level, helping the U17 and U23 teams achieve unprecedented international success.
Before arriving in Southeast Asia, Shin had managed various youth teams of South Korea, taking the U23 squad into the 2016 Olympic Quarter-Finals and the U20's to the World Cup Round of 16 later that same year. In 2017, Shin was appointed to the full senior national team position, taking South Korea all the way through qualification for the 2018 World Cup, culminating in their historic shutout of Germany in the final group stage match, thereby eliminating the defending champions from advancing into the knockout rounds.
Shin Tae-yong is now repeating this process as Indonesian national team head coach. Since taking over from McMenemy in 2020, Shin has also been concurrently coaching the Indonesian U20 and U23 sides. He reshaped the senior national team, integrating many of the junior players he has been cultivating. Within a year and a half under Shin's tutelage, the Garuda made it all the way to the ASEAN Championship final with a roster of players whose average age was 23.8 years old. Only two of Shin's roster were over 30; the rest were 28 and under with more than two-thirds of them 25 or younger, including four teenagers. On the way to that AFF final, Indonesia went undefeated with a +9 goal surplus in a group stage that featured two of the same Southeast Asian opponents who had last skewered them in World Cup qualifying - Vietnam and Malaysia.
Five months later, Indonesia fried Malaysia in the Southeast Asian Games to capture the bronze medal, and then trounced Thailand in the 2023 SEA Games final to win their first-ever gold in the subcontinental tournament.
In June 2022, almost exactly a year to the day when they ended their doomed World Cup qualifying campaign, Indonesia blasted into the 2023 Asian Cup to be held this coming January, upsetting Kuwait in Kuwait City along the way.
Just this past August, they finished second at the AFF U23 Championship, bowing in the final to Vietnam only in penalties.
That brings us to November 2023.
Shin is rolling Indonesia into Malate on a resurgent tear, reincarnated from the grave where they were buried in the last World Cup Qualifying cycle, determined to not finish in the cellar again. Thanks to favorites Iraq, who pummeled them the same night Vietnam blanked the Azkals, Philippines is two goals up on Indonesia at the bottom of the standings after one match day.
But rest assured, Shin Tae-yong has already put Basra behind them, and his Philippines counterpart Michael Weiss should forget that result too, because the Garuda are fully intent on stealing three points from our 7,102-island archipelago and taking it back to their 17,508-island archipelago.
True to his modus operandi, the average age of Shin's 25-man Indonesian roster for this month's Qualifiers is 24 years old. All but two are under 30, and over a third of the selection are 23 or younger. As they say, age is only a number, and we cannot allow ourselves to be fooled into believing this roster is comprised of a bunch of neophytes.
Twenty-one-year-old defender Pratama Arhan already has 35 caps under his belt, including the three matches that delivered Indonesia into January's Asian Cup. Arhan and 24-year-old captain Asnawi Mangkualam are tied with the most caps on the team. Both of them played the entire 90 on January 2 of this year when they spanked the Azkals at Rizal Memorial to finish the AFF Mitsubishi Cup group stage and send Stephan Schrock off to retirement. Under contract with second-division clubs in Japan and South Korea respectively, Arhan and Mangkualam are two of only eight players on the roster who play pro ball outside of Indonesia.
They aren't the only ones returning to Manila this week who were on that Indonesian lineup on January 2. Nine other players on that roster will be back, most notably midfielder Witan Sulaeman who leads the team with nine international goals. At 22 years old, Sulaeman has already made 34 appearances for the full national team. Fellow midfielder Egy Maulana comes in a close second with eight tallies through 21 appearances at 23 years of age. Also returning is forward Dendy Sulistyawan, who opened the scoring against the Azkals last January. At 27, Sulistyawan represents the older age bracket of the Indonesian roster, where only six players are over 26.
The most striking characteristic of this Indonesian selection is that 18 of them have represented or are currently representing the country on its national youth teams, many of them playing together for years and progressing together through the age levels since they were teens. Eleven of them have been coached by Shin for three years now not only on the senior squad, but on the U23 and U20 national teams.
Even though their caps indicate less experience at the full national team level compared to some of the Azkals, many of them have been playing together internationally since long before their caps started being counted.
Years of playing and progressing together through the same national youth teams is an advantage the Philippine national coach has never enjoyed. This current Azkals squad typifies the challenge that a Philippines manager faces when they take the position. Of the 26 players on the current Philippine National Team selection, you can count on half a hand, er foot, the number of players who played together on the same national youth squad.
Eleven countries of birth are represented on the Philippines national team. Only Schrock, Oskari Kekkonen, Justin Baas, Kevin Ingreso, and Neil Etheridge had any international youth experience before they arrived in the Philippines from four different countries at different points of their lives. Just five players have had more than one year of experience on Philippine national youth teams at multiple age levels - Manny Ott, Marwin Angeles, Pocholo Bugas, and OJ Porteria. Even the four Azkals who came up through the domestic development system never played together on a national team until their adult years. Three of them - defender Audie Menzie and midfielders Jesus Melliza and Bugas - graduated from the Far Eastern University program years apart, and Patrick Deyto played at La Salle.
While Shin defers more to many players from the ranks of the U20 and U23 squads at his disposal, Weiss has taken a distinctly different approach in assembling his Azkals roster, almost dialectically opposed to his counterpart. The Philippines National Team hitting the artificial turf on Tuesday is an average 32.25 years old, eight years above Indonesia's average age. While Shin's roster fields only six players over the age of 26, Weiss's has only seven players under 26. The Azkals have 12 veterans 30 and up, while the Garuda have two. The oldest player on the Filipino roster at 39, Simone Rota, is eight years senior to Jordi Amat on the Indonesian side. There are 13 players on the Philippine selection in their twenties, while Indonesia's roster has 23. Including last week's match day one, only four Filipinos in their twenties have collected more than 20 national team appearances. On the other side of the roster sheet, nine Indonesian players in the same age bracket have upwards of 20 caps.
It is hard to conclude definitively whether the age difference was a significant factor last week against Vietnam, whose roster averaged about the same as Indonesia's. What the estimated 8000 Filipino fans at Rizal Memorial Stadium can conclude, however, is that the Philippines lacks a thoroughbred finisher.
Implementing their signature run-and-gun North American style, the Philippine fast break produced numerous scoring chances on the counter, only for the Filipino bleacher sections to emit collective groan after groan, which progressively turned to frustration and anger laced with not a few obscenities after each successive opportunity squandered.
Weiss lacks options on the forward line. In decades of studying this game at various levels, I have often looked at a theoretical probability ratio called the collective goal production quotient to rate the potential threat level of a national team's striker corps. Simply divide the selected players' total caps by their total goals scored to date. Of course, scoring goals depends on a multitude of factors, but this quotient is just one assessment of the finishing potential of the forwards on the roster.
As a point of reference, the caps to goals ratio of the forwards listed on Lionel Scaloni's roster for Argentina's upcoming World Cup Qualifying match against Brazil on Tuesday is 473:173 for a potential threat rating of 2.73. One way to interpret this rating is you can expect a goal scored by this forward unit every 2.73 caps. The lower the number, the higher the probability of offensive drives being finished. The CGPQ of Brazil's current striker corps without the injured Neymar, incidentally, has fallen to 4.21.
The caps to goals ratio of the Philippine forwards listed on the official roster - Kenshiro Daniels, OJ Porteria, Patrick Reichelt, and Bienvenido Marañon is 170:24 for a CGPQ of 7.08, predicting a very difficult challenge indeed to finish the ball into the net. The three players Weiss actually ended up starting at forward - Santiago Rublico on the right, Mike Ott in center, and Reichelt on the left - produced a slightly better rating of 6.36, but still predictive of the dearth of Philippine goals last week. Vietnam's trio of starting forwards going into the match had a collective goal production quotient of 4.32, a significantly higher finishing probability. After Iraq's demolition of Indonesia last Thursday, the relatively young Garuda striker corps are crossing the Celebes Sea with a 38:17 caps to goals ratio for a very dangerous rating of 2.23.
Of course, these figures are indicators of what might happen in the course of a match. But in the fluid game of football, there are immeasurable variables at constant play, and the history of the game is littered with unpredicted outcomes.
The Philippines and Indonesia have shared a long history of football. Since 1958, they've played each other 25 times. As a staunch die-hard supporter of Philippine football, it's painful to read the results. Overall, the Philippines has won one game in the series, drawn four and lost 20. The good news is that Indonesia and the Philippines are dead even in the last four meetings, taking one win each and drawing two.
I happened to witness the only Philippine victory in the series ever, when the Azkals shredded Indonesia 4-0 in the 2014 AFF Suzuki Cup group stage in Hanoi. Six of the current Azkals - Reichelt, Deyto, Rota, Manny Ott, Daniels, and Sato probably have fond memories of that afternoon; Manny Ott even scored a goal. November 25 will be the ninth anniversary of that victory and it would be nice to celebrate with another win. But it's probably best they forget about it for the time being. Needless to say, this new Indonesian generation built by Shin Tae-yong would not have any collective memory of that defeat as none of them were old enough yet to have played. They'll have something else on their minds come Tuesday night.
The history between the Philippines and Indonesia actually goes further back than 1958. The archive begins in the 1930's when Indonesia was under Netherlands rule and ridiculously called "Dutch East Indies". The Philippines won in their only international against Dutch East Indies in 1935. Dutch East Indies qualified for the 1938 World Cup to become the first and only Southeast Asian team to do so.
The next Southeast Asian country to qualify for the World Cup could very well come out of Group F 88 years after the first one. Tuesday's collision at Rizal Memorial will be a pivotal match. Judging from last Thursday's results, Iraq looks poised to win the group, leaving the second place spot for the three Southeast Asian rivals to fight it out. A second consecutive Philippine loss at home would throw the Azkals to the foot of a very steep mountain to climb indeed, even with the help of 10K fans...
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| Azkals goalkeeper Patrick Deyto (in yellow) guards the goal against the driving Samsul Arif (18) of Indonesia during the 2014 AFF Suzuki Cup at My Dinh Stadium in Hanoi, as Philippine defenders scramble back. Deyto was 24 years old and finished the match with a clean sheet in the only Philippine victory over Indonesia ever. Photo by Kokoy Severino. |
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| Daisuke Sato (11) crosses the ball from the left side against Indonesia during the 2014 AFF Suzuki Cup at My Dinh Stadium in Hanoi. Misagh Bahadoran (9) looks on. Sato was 20 years old when the Philippines won against Indonesia for the first and only time. Photo by Kokoy Severino. |
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| Manny Ott fires the second Azkals goal of the night into the net against Indonesia in the 2014 AFF Suzuki Cup group stage. Ott was 22 years old. This week marks the ninth anniversary of his goal. He will be trying to repeat a moment like this when Indonesia comes to town on November 21 for a critical World Cup Qualifier. Photo by Kokoy Severino. |
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| Simone Rota (23) pressures Indonesian goalkeeper Kurnia Meiga in a goalmouth melee during the 2014 AFF Suzuki Cup as Rob Gier's icer gets through to the back of the net. Rota was 30 years old when the Philippines beat Indonesia for the first time in history. Now 39, Rota is the dean of the current Azkals facing Indonesia on Tuesday in a critical qualifier for the 2026 World Cup. Since the 2014 victory, the Philippines has drawn two matches against Indonesia and lost one. Photo by Kokoy Severino. |
Philippines Men's National Team results and fixtures, 2026 World Cup Qualifiers Asia Second Round Group F (all kickoff times local at venue):
November 16, 2023 – Philippines 0-2 Vietnam @ Rizal Memorial Stadium, Manila 7:00 pm
November 21, 2023 – Philippines vs Indonesia @ Rizal Memorial Stadium, Manila 7:00 pm
March 21, 2024 – Iraq vs Philippines @ Iraq, venue and time TBD
March 26, 2024 – Philippines vs Iraq @ Philippines, venue and time TBD
June 6, 2024 – Vietnam vs Philippines @ Vietnam, venue and time TBD
June 11, 2024 – Indonesia vs Philippines @ Indonesia, venue and time TBD
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| Photo by Dad. |
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