 The Philippines women's soccer team just had their first World Cup whenever it is historic. A lot of people are celebrating. However, a lot of people are trying to jump in and say, Hey, hey, hey, most of the players on the team are actually Americans of just slightly Filipino descent. So I guess David, we're here to ask this question today. Does it matter? Hey, all I'm saying is Mabuhay and Salamat Po to all the players. It doesn't bother me. I mean, no, no, no, shout out to them. Huge shout out to the women's soccer team from the Philippines. Historic first goal. First win by Serena Bolden was the one who scored the goal to upset New Zealand. And she's from Northern California. I believe she's half Filipino and half African American. So I mean, I think it's really dope for the Philippines, but there are a lot of interesting questions raised by it because I believe 22 of the 23 national team players for the are like four and born and raised. But they do have the Filipino ancestry. Right, right, right. And maybe that's all it takes nowadays, guys. Anyways, we're going to talk about some important questions. Please hit that like button. Check out other episodes of the Hop Hop Boys and please show love if you guys enjoy our commentary on the news that we cover. I think the key is Andrew here for me, at least me looking at this. A lot of people have been doing this on in the Olympics for a long time. Now, maybe there hasn't been hasn't been done on the scale of this where 22 of the 23 players are not locally born and bred or don't speak to Gallagher or only partially Filipino. But even the Jamaican track team, Andrew, where everybody's always like, oh, man, the Jamaicans are so great. A lot of those people are born in the UK, Canada or the US, but they still run for Jamaica. Right. So I feel like a question that I'm going to ask is that in these international games, whether it's the World Cup games, FIBA, Olympics, basically all these opportunities where national teams are trying to build up their national team as good as possible. They're going to end up taking on a lot of foreign born and raised players with some slight heritage connection. But does that even matter anymore? Is it not really about who's from your country, but who wants to bring glory to your country or who wants to add to your country? Who wants to contribute to your country? Yeah. And what are the details and the stipulations that go into that? Do you have to go play for a friendly country or is it okay that Becky Hammond and 08 Andrew instead of playing for Team USA because she didn't make it went to go play for Team Russia for women's basketball. Yeah. And she's not even of Russian heritage or of that we know of or you know, even Kyle Anderson, an NBA player. He's only an eighth Chinese through his Chinese Jamaican side, but now he's the first foreigner to play on Team China in FIBA. But obviously playing for China or Russia is going to be more controversial than playing for the Philippines. I understand why. I don't like it. I don't like it. If you can't make Team USA, just sit the Olympics out. All right, guys, we're going to go through the comments section and then our own takeaways. Somebody said all of a sudden I'm not hearing that you're not even full Filipino crowd. So this guy was saying I pulled this from a Filipino Instagram account basically saying that a lot of people criticize partial Filipinos for not speaking Tagalog for not having spent a lot of time in the country growing up. But every time there's an opportunity to bring national pride to the country, then people are like, no, it's okay. It doesn't matter. Like I'm just happy for them. All right. So I do have to say I think sports is a little different than even like the international women's pageants, right? Like sometimes when a pageant woman is like mixed heritage of that country, people feel like they're, what is it, perpetuating like this Eurocentric beauty standards Eurocentric beauty standards versus in sports. They're kind of like, well, we just want to win. It's like a meritocracy. So we'll just take who we can and who's proud to play on our team. You're saying that there's less commentary on societal like beauty standards or just societal subjectiveness because sports are more objective typically. Yeah. Yeah. I think when it comes to sports, especially the Philippines, that you know, they, this is a historic win. They weren't considered a very good soccer team for the past decade. They didn't have a strong soccer program. So I guess what I'm saying is to make this leap. Everyone's mostly going to celebrate it versus if it was like a singer or model from the Philippines that was representing the Philippines, who was mixed. Okay. I can see that you're basically saying sports and entertainment, even though they're put in the same category, there is some differences and I'm not saying that this just applies to the Philippines. I think most countries would also feel this way. So this is on the more descent side. Somebody said, bro, why are we celebrating this? They can't even do it with full-blooded Filipinos. And someone said, dude, there's no such thing as a full-blooded Filipino bro. Somebody said, tea is still tea no matter how much milk you add. Stop being racist. Somebody said they're either Americans or Europeans. They're raised outside of the pH and they don't speak Filipino. And what do you think about these arguments in the Instagram section? They're going back and forth. Like I said, I'm not Filipino. I'm not one to judge. I just pull the comments. Yeah. I think it's interesting and obviously I think that this is a fair debate. Obviously I understand. I can like empathize somewhat with this sentiment, but I think the way I look at it is in the long term, this is good for the Philippines soccer program. Right. To get it jump-started. You need to get a win. You need to get the wins and then it's going to make the program stronger so that more native Filipinos, now however you define them, right, they can grow up in the system from a young age and become good at soccer. I think Filipinos can be good at soccer. I think they can compete on the on the elite stage, but I don't think their program is good enough at the time. So you just need this kind of glory to just put an emphasis on the program. So now maybe the government will give it more funding. Some other Filipinos came through and said it's not about how they look or the blood to me. It's more about us never having any pressure to develop local training systems because we all just get the partial Filipino players from overseas. Right. Right. And this I guess just goes back to my point. I would hope that it actually improves the training systems. Somebody said, Hey guys, I don't mean to be mean here, but nobody cares about female soccer in the Philippines, man. This is a basketball and boxing country. You know, we just don't really care about football like that. Yeah. I mean, I do think that, you know, obviously a big win that makes the sport more popular. But some other people said, you know, if we put the same amount of effort into soccer that we did basketball, we'll actually be champs because for basketball, we are too short to keep playing the game. Yo, Andrew, we had a really smart Filipino friend named PJ and I remember he told me this five, six, seven years ago. He was just like, man, we should have picked soccer because we're close to the ground and we could use the crossovers, but do soccer crossovers. Right. Right. Right. I think that it is tough that not every country is going to be good at every sport and obviously boxing with many Pacquiao, of course, I could see why that people are putting a lot of effort in a boxing basketball. It is true that that's what the Philippines love, but it's also true that they haven't been competing on the net on the international level as as well. Yeah, I would say the Filipinos are really good at basketball considering some of the height differences. Right. Right. But but yeah, I mean, I guess on a world scale, it hasn't been as successful as people would want. This person was another comment from the Philippines that said, if only the Philippine government gives attention to its use, instead, Philippines prefer to recognize beauty pageants, which to me is not important. Yeah. I mean, listen, guys, would you say that different societies, they definitely put a lot of value on different things? Like, for example, Andrew, beauty pageants are not popping in America anymore. They came from America, right? But they're still big in the Philippines. Yeah. And in every country, some countries have more resources. Some countries have less resources, but they all have to make hard decisions about how to distribute those resources and attentions. Yeah. And I think it's cool overall. Like, I think it's very cool that, you know, people, descendants of the diaspora of that country can come back and bring glory to that country. I do think that you'd have to take a look at and see how like the the national Filipino soccer team players like feel about it, where they would rather the systems get better so that they could have been better versus just importing people from the better soccer systems internationally, you know? And I think that again, long term, you got to look at wanting to develop your own national systems. Right, right, right. Um, all right, Andrew, let's get into some of the comments from Yahoo News, which are not Filipino comments. These are mostly comments from, I'm assuming, white people. Somebody said passport bros for the wind, man. I'm telling you already know all these girl players got a non-Asian dad and a Filipino mom. Honestly, probably most of them. Yeah, probably most of them, to be honest. Um, somebody said, man, how come these people want to go there and then sing the national anthem for the Philippines? And they're so proud because the Philippines gave them a chance from their mom's side. But then how come the even our US women's team wants to take a knee and not even stand for our national anthem? How come it feels like everybody thinks it's trendy to be American but hate America? Mmm. And then somebody said, man, it was America will destroy itself from within. Is that possibly help happening right now? And someone said, listen, why are you guys blaming the liberal educators? What about the degradation of family? 50% divorce rate, government and business leaders who cheat and steal shame on you for blaming it on everybody else? Right, right, right. I mean, what do you think about this? Because this always sparks it because they're like, man, these American girls that are trained over here. And yeah, they didn't make the US women's team. But now they're bringing glory to another country. I think at the end of the day, sports is like capitalism, bro. It's just a meritocracy. It's like whoever is the strongest gets the most opportunities. And if you want to play, you're going to go wherever you can to play dedicated your life to this sport. Yeah, that's a sport. The sport has no boundaries. That's the thing, man. Like you think that it's unpatriotic. Well, it's like they what if they tried out for the American team and they didn't make it. And they're like, I still want to keep playing. I want to be on a big stage. I want to play for something that's meaningful. I worked every second of my life to be good enough to be on this stage. And I just didn't make the US women's team because the talent pool is too deep. Capitalism in it sports capitalism. I think that's what I think. Somebody said, are they going to take a knee for the Filipino anthem though? And this turned into a whole thing about Megan Rapinoe. And I guess the US women's team is known for being very political, particularly more on the left, progressive. And some people really, really don't like that. I thought this comment was really interesting. Someone's like, well, why bother having national teams if you don't have to be from that country? You represent. Yeah, I mean, I think David, I did in a big picture for sports isn't going to start taking away from the whole nationalism. If you are able to compete with a team almost entirely full of foreigners of just partial heritage. Yeah, I mean, I remember one time. I believe it was the World Cup final between France and another team. Another European team. Was it the UK or was it somebody else where all the teams were pretty much descendants of African immigrants to France or Africans to whatever Western European country. So the whole teams were black. Yeah, but I think nationalism just looks different. I feel like nationalism in America is often viewed as just like very white. Like, well, if you're white American, then you represent America. But if you're any other color, it's hard to represent America. It's almost like, but then also the Philippines can make a point and be like, well, you know, we are such a mixed country. Anyways, like what does it matter? Yeah, I mean, I believe the guy who funded the Philippines Women's National Program or like help set it up was a Chinese Filipino guy. Yeah, we're doing the most Chinese. You know, on the Chinese hockey team, they imported like just some straight up white dudes. So many Canadians. They weren't even of Chinese heritage. Yeah, like at all. Yeah, they just gave him temporary citizenship. So I don't know. I guess it's about how much you care about the glory. All right, Andrew, this is a geopolitical comment. Someone said, have you guys noticed that most non-white Americans loyalty is always to another country or they just don't seem as patriotic as white Americans? This was a real comment from the Yahoo News section. I mean, I just think that minorities, definitely like we don't hate non-American countries as much because we have heritage from, you know, recently from other countries. But it's because we're immigrants. Like if you look at Nico Manian, he's an Italian American basketball player. He went to go play back in Italy. It's still a place for Italy national team. Yeah, and but he, he's like looks white, you know, whatever. I don't know. So I don't know. I just don't, David, I mean, overall like to wrap it all up. I guess this is the world of global sports now. Yeah, this is the world of global sports. I think once teams, you know, started importing players from all over for different sports, you know, I think everybody else had to do it too to stay competitive too. And to be honest, I don't think this is even 100th as controversial as somebody going to play for the Russian team or Chinese team, obviously. Right. Because those are more politicized countries. Right, because Philippines is an American ally. Yeah. And Philippines is like, you know, there's not. Well, you know, the Philippines actually used to be an American colony for a number of decades. Right. So I guess overall, I'm happy. I just hope that it helps jumpstart the soccer systems over there. That's what I hope. And I think that that's what most people hope. But ultimately, hey, you got to win. Hey, man. Get excited. Let's let's keep it going. Yeah. I think that they just need to take a look at like, what is it? What is it going to get the ball rolling on? Yes. But yeah, shout out to, you know, the Philippines World Cup women's team. It's pretty dope. Let us know what you guys think in the comments section below. And until next time, we're going to hop out, boys. We out. Peace.