Gilas Pilipinas is ready to fly to Tehran, Iran on Thursday, September 13 for the second round of the International Federation of Association Football (FIFA) World Cup Qualifiers. They currently hold the third place behind the Boomers and the Iranians.
The sixteen chosen players were initially announced a few days ago and they started practicing only ten days before the game itself. According to Coach Yeng Guiao, the public will not be aware of the final twelve on the lineup until the qualifiers officially begin. He is bringing all sixteen players abroad, namely: Beau Belga, Paul Lee, Gabe Norwood, Scottie Thompson, Asi Taulava, Alex Cabagnot, Japeth Aguilar, Allein Maliksi, Ian Sangalang, Matthew Wright, Raymond Almazan, Christian Standhardinger, Marcio Lassiter, Greg Slaughter, Stanley Pringle, and Poy Erram.
Unfortunately, for the game against the Iranians, Wright and Aguilar are suspended, while there is still uncertainty on the eligibility of Standhardinger and Pringle.
Coach Yeng Guiao stated the biggest difficulty of training is getting the players to follow the same system as they all come from various professional Philippine Basketball Association (PBA) teams.
After their game against Iran, Gilas will play their next game in the country in Smart Araneta Coliseum against Team Qatar.
Gilas Pilipinas has recently received criticism, with Asi Taulava claiming that the Gilas era is outdated. However, in an interview with Tiebreaker Times, Gabe Norwood begged to disagree saying, “No matter what the name is going out, I think the things that were accomplished by the Gilas program, if you want to call it by the name itself, you can’t go out and ignore it. We were on the world stage and I think that was [the] ultimate goal.”