poor loser(s)

ralf souquet just happened to suck at his game at a very bad time. and ronnie alcano's peaking performance made things even worse for souquet, making alcano the 3rd filipino to win the world pool championship.

i'm not taking anything away from alcano, of course. except for that moment when the score stood at 15-9 where he missed the 9-ball (of all balls on the table...), he played great pool against souquet. his break was efficient: soft yet accurate, which is just the opposite of the djanggo bustamante break with the accompanying flying kick from his right leg. his combination shots with the 9-ball were gutsy game winners which the crowd loved. and his safety game was just beautiful it boggled the mind, much to souquet's discomfort. to reach the final he even beat other big name players in the tournament like efren "bata" reyes and the defending champion wu chia ching of taiwan.

but nevertheless, ralf souquet simply sucked... and he knew it. he struggled with a lot of errors and which alcano took advantage of to dominate the match. even his break didn't help him, not giving him a clear shot to the next object ball. in fact, he sucked so much that during the post game interview, he couldn't help but shed tears in front of God, espn, and everybody. poor loser. seeing a grown man like him cry was so unsettling for anthony suntay (who did the post game interview) that, in a weak attempt to make souquet feel better, suntay encouraged the crowd to applaud souquet, telling him to "feel the love" of the filipino fans. hahahahahaha. schadenfreude, more like.

naturally, the newspaper headlines the following day were all about alcano's win. and president arroyo, the political animal that she is, does the same thing she did with manny pacquiao and takes advantage of the situation, awarding alcano the "champion for life" award (corny name for an award, no?) and a cool 1 million pesos (kaaachiiing). i wouldn't be surprised if members of the house of representatives and the senate, plus his home town's mayor, vice mayor, ... [fill in the blanks] ... up to the baranggay tanod, will all be lining up to give him heaps and heaps and heaps of awards. anything to bask in the reflected glory of alcano's victory, i guess.

but wait a minute... don't you notice something here? try mentioning a list of sports filipinos have excelled at internationally. and when i say internationally, i mean the philippines vs. the world kind of international. so in that definition, our win at the last sea games won't count (we had homecourt advantage there anyway). let's see, we have billiards, boxing, bowling... see it now? aside from the obvious and strange fact that they all start with the letter B, the other thing common with them is that they are all individual sports.

tell me, have filipinos ever excelled in a team sport internationally? let's see... basketball? nope... we can't even win gold at the asian games. football? even worse, i think myanmar just gave the philippine team a good thumping at a southeast asian event recently... uhhh, rugby? does the philippines even have a rugby team? rugby boys, maybe... how about baseball? yeah, we did win once in an international little league competition some years ago, but we did it by sending overage players. holy crap. we can't even seem to win in team sports without cheating!

what the hell does that mean? that pinoys can only excel when they are working for their own glory? that pinoys cannot grasp the concept of a TEAM, much more the concept of a NATION? another result of the notorious crab mentality that we all complain about but never seem to conquer?

doesn't speak so well for us as a people, no?