Early preparation for 2014

Philippine Azkals coach Michael Weiss plans to begin their preparation for the 2014 Asian Football Conference Challenge Cup as early as June this year, hoping to keep the same 23-member lineup in time for the final eight-team tournament in the Maldives.

And Weiss is looking at all International Federation of Association Football (Fifa) match dates for friendly games against stronger teams starting on June 4, 8 and 12.

 The team is set to play an away match in Hong Kong and then return home for two more games, one in Cebu and the other at the Rizal Memorial Football Field against Southeast Asian powerhouse teams Thailand and Vietnam.

"We (also hope to) the Emirates or Syria, one of those Middle East teams and see how far we can go,” said Weiss, who also eyes holding two friendly matches on all Fifa dates from September to November.

He said that the Azkals’ management and coaching staff will also work on trying to keep the current 23-member roster and turn them into a cohesive unit in time for the Maldives tournament. The German coach is also reluctant to bring in new players to the team at this point.

"I plan to go directly to the clubs to present our case and sincerity. I have an impression that they don’t take us seriously. We will talk to them and I’ll make a request to make our players available,” said Weiss. “We have the core and they understand each other.”

And Azkals defender Rob Gier, crafty midfielder Stephan Schrock and star striker Phil Younghusband know that the team needs to play more together, especially with new scoring threat Javier Patiño, to feel and understand their movements inside the pitch.

Gier said the Azkals focused on its offense when they crushed Cambodia, 8-0, and defense when they scored a 1-0 win over Turkmenistan to top Group E in the AFC Challenge Cup qualifiers.

“We need both aspects. It proves that we have all the ingredients to be a very good team not only in Southeast Asia but in Asia as well,” said Gier.

“We noticed the level of facing teams like Turkmenistan is high so we are looking at playing on the Fifa dates for the Europe-based players,” added Schrock.

 Younghusband said they expect to face teams that play at the same level as Turkmenistan in next year’s Challenge Cup in the Maldives. “This is only (our) second game of playing together, if we could get to play a lot more matches we could get along better.”

Marwin Angeles, Misagh Bahadoran, Dennis Cagara, Emelio Caligdong, Jeffrey Christiaens, Jason de Jong, Neil Etheridge, Chris Greatwich, brothers Angel and Juan Luis Guirado, Jerry Lucena, Carl de Murga, Paul Mulders, Roland Muller, Jose Elmer Porteria, Patrick Reichelt, Ed SacapañoMatthew Uy, and James Younghusband are the other members of the Azkals’ 23-man roster that competed in the Challenge Cup qualifiers.

Weiss added that they will also hold a separate camp for locally based players in America to prepare the younger batch of Azkals. Most of the members of the Azkals’ 23-man team play in various European-based leagues.

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