Untold Stories, Southeast Asian Clubs: Ceres-La Salle FC
8 May 2016
Southeast Asia has a rich football history, with some big-name clubs intertwined with some notable, yet lesser-known outfits. In the latest edition of our tour through the region, FourFourTwo charts the rapid emergence of ambitious Filipino club Ceres-La Salle FC...
It’s a 45-minute ferry ride across the Guimaras Strait from the traditional hotbed of Filipino football in Iloilo to the newly emerging cradle of the game in Bacolod.
CERES-LA SALLE FC
FOUNDED: 2012
COLOURS: Yellow/Black
MOST SUCCESSFUL COACH: Ali Go (The man behind the club's dramatic rise and with a second and first division title to his name as well as the 2014 League Cup success)
HOME GROUND: Panaad Stadium, Bacolod (for AFC matches)
CAPACITY: 15,000
The story of the nation’s ascendant force, however, Ceres-La Salle FC, begins with a different form of transport.
The humble jeepney.
A ubiquitous sight throughout the archipelago and famed for their range of often gaudy decorations, a single jeepney purchased in 1968 laid the foundation for a club many are tipping as a surprise contender for this year’s AFC Cup.
Ricardo Yanson and his wife Olivia started their business venture from those modest origins with that lone jeepney used as a passenger transport service on just the single route in Bacolod.
In the early 1970s the business expanded to run a new route they dubbed the ‘Ceres Line’ and from there things went from strength to strength, with the business today operating almost a thousand vehicles throughout the Philippines under the name Vallacar.
The company’s yellow vehicles are now so popular throughout their home island of Negros that locals often simply use the word ‘Ceres’ to refer to buses and it’s a success that the family-run business has been able to perhaps even supersede with the dramatic rise of Ceres FC.
image:
images.cdn.fourfourtwo.com/sites/fourfourtwo.com/files/styles/inline-image/public/img_7476.jpg?itok=yVhERjW_Coach Ali Go (centre) at an AFC Cup press conference
Yanson’s sons, Leo and Ricky, assumed responsibility for the business from their father and with their love of football, there soon became a synergy between the transport company and the global game in a region where basketball has traditionally been king.
LEADING FIGURES
LEO AND RICKY YANSON – Sons of the man who inspired the vision of the club, the late Ricardo Yanson. Leo runs most of the football operations and it was his support for the club that allowed it to recruit and retain some of the best talent in the Philippines
ALI GO – Has been with the club since its modern inception, first as a player/coach and latterly as the head coach. A driving force behind the on-field success and off-field recruitment
STEPHAN SCHROCK – German-born, Filipino international who is the most recognisable face of the recent generation of national team stars. Remarkably, he agreed to join Ceres on loan from German 2. Bundesliga outfit Greuther Furth in a major coup for football in the nation
Known even throughout their high-school days for willingly supporting any football-related venture, the brothers began regularly sponsoring tournaments and teams throughout Negros before focusing on a local college in Bacolod.
That school, the University of St. La Salle, rose to become one of the dominant forces on the island and would often represent Bacolod and Negros in regional and national tournaments, prompting the brothers to dream even bigger.
Soon calls were made to Ali Go, a Filipino international and one of the more prominent figures to have emerged from the island.
With his playing career winding down, Go agreed to join the club – newly renamed Ceres-La Salle FC – as he began his next chapter as a coach.
Now the club’s head coach and one of the driving forces behind its rapid rise to the top of Filipino football, Go told FourFourTwo it was the vision of the Yanson brothers that first attracted him to the club.
“I had known the family for a long time, maybe 20 years or so, and they’ve always been so passionate about football, supporting young players from Bacolod and elsewhere,” he explains.
“When they asked me to join their project I didn’t have to think twice.”
That was in 2012 and after carefully recruiting players from outside the island to complement the local talent, Ceres swept to the regional Negros Football Championship title with an 11-0 win over Bacolod United in the final.
As a result they earned entry to the nationwide PFF Smart Club Championship, a kind of local version of the FA Cup, and to widespread disbelief they also brushed aside all comers, defeating Pasargad 1-0 in the final in Manila in early 2013.
That gave the club even greater belief, applying to join the national championship, known as the United Football League (UFL), later that same year.
Ceres’ first assignment was in the 2013 UFL Cup, where they made it all the way to the quarter-finals before entering the UFL in Division 2 for the 2014 season.
With some more shrewd recruitment the club blitzed the division, losing only once all season as they finished eight points clear at the head of the standings and earned promotion to the top flight for the 2015 season.
By this time the club’s ambition had caught the eye of all across the country and with even greater investment they attracted a core of Filipino internationals and, remarkably, completed the Cinderella story by winning the UFL in their first campaign in 2015, only dropping two matches all year.
As Go tells FourFourTwo, even he was surprised by just how quickly things unfolded for the club.
image:
images.cdn.fourfourtwo.com/sites/fourfourtwo.com/files/styles/inline-image/public/img_7421.jpg?itok=mZwgK3QCCeres have quickly become accustomed to success
“It was so hard at first for us as a regional club to even recruit players and those players must have had a sense that they were taking a risk by placing their careers in the hands of this club that had, in a way, come from nowhere,” Go says. “But I always had belief and never gave up.
CLUB CREST
image:
images.cdn.fourfourtwo.com/sites/fourfourtwo.com/files/styles/puff-image/public/img_11101166.jpg?itok=JIsyRwrIThe green represents the school colours of St. La Salle College, the two stars for the two league titles the club has won and the logo in the middle is that of the club’s owners, Vallacar.
“Right from the start we had a plan of how we wanted things to develop; we wanted to be the best club in Bacolod, then Negros, then the best in the Philippines and now we have to think about the next aim.”
That could well involve making an unlikely title run in the AFC Cup.
Already, Ceres have created history by becoming the first club from the Philippines to reach the knockout stage of the tournament. They will play either South China or Mohun Bagan in the Round of 16 in late May.
Emerging from a tough group containing both Malaysian hotshots Selangor and S.League heavyweights Tampines Rovers has given the club a real belief that it can keep its giant-killing run going.
The coach puts much of the success down to the day-to-day involvement of his chairman and owner.
“Leo (Yanson) has really helped this club a lot. He’s always with the team when we play and travel, he sleeps in the same hotel, eats with the players and is at training and that lets the players know that the club is one big family,” Go explains.
image:
images.cdn.fourfourtwo.com/sites/fourfourtwo.com/files/styles/inline-image/public/11_5.jpg?itok=JDnfKMYRAn example of a jeepney. Photo: tropicalvacationspotsblog.com
“When we started this AFC Cup we just wanted to do well in the group stage but now we’ve made history in the Philippines and we want to keep achieving even greater things.
“I’m not saying we can win the tournament but why can’t we keep this dream going?
“The players are working hard every day, they’re remaining humble with their feet on the ground, and everybody is striving to get better because the team knows if they don’t work hard then everything can fall apart.”
In fact, you could mount a good argument that things should have already fallen apart given the unique challenges faced by Ceres.
With the UFL still in its relative infancy the league season lasts barely five months and even with cup matches thrown in the amount of actual competitive games the club plays is one of the lowest anywhere in Asia.
Go estimates that, prior to the recent kick-off of the new UFL season, his club played only eight matches from the end of September 2015 until it emerged from its AFC Cup group in late April.
That means the club, the modern incarnation of which only arose three years ago, has played eight competitive matches in seven months and yet still emerged as one of the most impressive forces in the region; it is truly a remarkable story.
Even more so when you factor in that the club plays every single one of their UFL matches away from home, as Go explains.
image:
images.cdn.fourfourtwo.com/sites/fourfourtwo.com/files/styles/inline-image/public/img_6938.jpg?itok=rtygfMee“There have been discussions and hopefully from 2017 we’ll be able to play in Bacolod but for now all the UFL matches are centralised in Manila.
MORE UNTOLD STORIES
image:
images.cdn.fourfourtwo.com/sites/fourfourtwo.com/files/styles/puff-image/public/black_widows-2_0.jpg?itok=HE0Vca4gBuriram United, Thailand
Selangor MPPJ, Malaysia
Balestier Khalsa, Singapore
Phnom Penh Crown FC, Cambodia
Hanoi FC, Vietnam
“That means our players have to have two houses, one in Manila and one in Bacolod, and for most of the season we have to stay away from our families and supporters in the capital.
“Sometimes if we have a couple of days or a week off we’ll return and train in Bacolod but it becomes expensive and time consuming.
“It’s only when we play our AFC Cup matches that we are really at home and every single time the stadium is full with more than 10,000 supporters; even when we travelled to places we thought had a big football tradition in Singapore and Malaysia we never saw these kind of crowds.”
Now, with a team to be proud of on an island famed for its sugar industry, this club that grew from humble origins is turning the spotlight on Filipino football.
With fellow UFL outfit Kaya likely to join Ceres in the knockout stages of the AFC Cup, these are heady days for the emerging sport and the club with a modest budget in regional terms is showing just what can be achieved with dedicated ownership, savvy recruitment and solid leadership.
Read more at
www.fourfourtwo.com/sg/features/untold-stories-southeast-asian-clubs-ceres-la-salle-fc?page=0%2C2#ZIePccgbZc347K1h.99