Mark Hartmann

By Mike Limpag

MARK�S MARK. While I love to get tweets from fellow football fans, some of whom are in Taiwan for the Long Teng Cup, there was one one disturbing tweet from Mark Hartmann that stirred a ruckus.

The Filipino-British player, whose hasn�t even scored a goal, much less a name in the international stage is whining that his stint in the Long Teng Cup is a waste of time because he isn�t starting.

�Not starting again! Someone get me on the next flight home #wasteoftime!� The soon-to-be-former-Azkal-tweeted.

Naturally, a nice diplomatic tweet like that gets a lot of reply, so when I promised to pledge P100 for his plane ticket back home? (Milk�s pretty expensive.)

One fan promised P1,000 and another pledged P3,000 to bring his ungrateful butt home.

Sure, players should have social media lives, but come on! When you put on that uniform, you should have some semblance of responsibility and what does it tell the local players who have strived hard to just be in the training pool only to be cut?


Here�s this guy, who made the team but thinks it�s a waste of time because he isn�t starting?

Things like these only fuel the argument from critics that the Azkals are nothing but a bunch of pa-pogi whiners who are after a good time.

This also reminds me of a suggestion to have all the Azkals undergo a seminar on what they can or cannot say online as this wasn�t the first time that a tweet got a player in trouble.

A seminar is good but I say players like Mark Hartmann should remember one thing, they may have raised the profile of football in this country but they haven�t done shit yet.

Fans have stuck with the team, through the bad times and the great times and if Mark Hartmann thinks it�s a waste of time?

Good riddance!


Cebu Football