Teams I Cheered (International Football)

As you guys may know, I like, love football. So for this post, I am going to feature my favorite teams in the international scene. This are the countries I cheered in the World Cup.

My first team feature is the Netherlands, also known as Holland. They are affectionately named the Oranje! I have been a fan of this team since high school, during the 1998 World Cup in France. They placed third during that WC edition deploying what was the best Oranje team ever (Sorry, my opinion!). It had the venerable Edwin van de Saar, the de Boer brothers, Patrick Kluivert, Marc Overmars and of course, my idol, Dennis Bergkamp. The video below is the very video clip I saw over CNN that made me an Oranje fan.

The Dutch game is known as the clock work orange. They have an excellent defense, that if you slipped up on your offense, they'll do their efficient counterattack and score goals, as seen in the video above.

In the recent World Cup, I think I was only a handful of Filipino fans who cheered for Oranje through and through, and through, and thick or thin. They were against the mighty Brazilians in the quarterfinals, and were able to defeat them. They even managed to survive the 5 goal thriller against resilient Uruguay. But sad to say, they bowed to Spain in the finals via an Andres Iniesta goal extra time. Once again, they are the bride's maid.

 

 
Yup, I am cheering also for the Samurai Blue, Japan's national football team. I can say that this was not a hard choice for me since I am an otaku. I love like anything and everything with regards to Japan (except for the WWII thingy).The Japanese team is one of the dominant teams in Asia, along with South Korea and Saudi Arabia. But it's dominance in Asia seemed not to resonate in the world stage until in the recently concluded World Cup, where they came in second to the Netherlands in their group. Their campaign was cut short via a penalty shootout lost against Paraguay in the Round of 16.

I have every reason to cheer for this Asian power house. One of which is that they have a very cute team captain, Makoto Hasebe.

  i heart Makoto Hasebe.

But of course, how could I betray my roots! I also cheer for my own team, the Azkals!

Go Team Philippines!

Go Azkals!