By Sid Ventura
For Yahoo! Southeast Asia
I can�t tell you how exhilarating it was to be at Panaad Stadium for the Philippines-Mongolia AFC Challenge Cup match. I can�t tell you because I don�t know.
I was unable to fly to Bacolod, so I had planned to catch the game at home. But Sky Cable chose this day, of all days, to have a massive service interruption, forcing me to find an establishment that was showing the match.
It turned out to be a blessing in disguise, because there are few things in this world that are more fun to do than watch the Azkals with a bunch of strangers, collectively cheer and scream, slap high fives, slowly get intoxicated, and listen to one of them adoringly compare Chieffy Caligdong to Pele.
The bar/resto I chose was actually my third choice. The first one said their cable connection wasn�t functioning properly. The second one was a case of �wrong program.� I saw a bunch of guys huddled together, all intently staring at a TV set, so I quickly parked and ran over to them, expecting to find the match already being shown. Instead, the TV was showing video karera. Oops.
When I finally got lucky on my third attempt, it was worth the hunt. A group of guys were sitting around the restaurant�s bar waiting for the match to begin. They weren�t the sophisticated lot you�d expect to find in any trendy bar in Eastwood or Makati, but they were down-to-earth, opinionated, loud but not to the point of being rowdy, and for some of them, not too steeped in football knowledge (which made the night even more fun).
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