THE Philippine Football Federation is shelving the ‘Azkals’ moniker for the men’s football national team which ushered in a new chapter with the appointment of Tom Saintfiet as the head coach.
The Belgian coach has a 27-year managerial experience, the most recent of which is coaching the Gambia national team from 2018 to 2024.
Under his leadership, Gambia reached the African Cup of Nations for the first time in 2021, getting as far as the round-of-16.
Saintfiet replaces Weiss
Saintfiet resigned from the Gambia post last January.
Saintfiet, who replaced Michael Weiss, will debut as the men’s football team coach in the next Fifa World Cup 2026 Asian qualifiers window where they will face Iraq in a home-and-home series on March 21 in Basra and March 26 at the Rizal Memorial Sports Complex.
The hiring of Saintfiet was officially announced in a press conference on Monday. But ultimately, the big story of the day was when it was revealed that the PFF will no longer use the ‘Azkals’ name for its men’s national team after more than a decade.
'Miracle of Hanoi'
The Azkals, a term coined from the local jargon for a street dog, became a household name beginning in the team’s ‘Miracle in Hanoi’ campaign in the 2010 AFF Suzuki Cup, but the moniker can be traced back to the renaissance of Philippine football.
Recently, the PFF has been branding the men’s football team as PMNT following the resignation of Dan Palami as the long-time team manager, fueling talks that it would no longer use the ‘Azkals’ moniker.
PFF director of national teams and men’s team manager Freddy Gonzalez later confirmed the federation’s choice not to use the moniker following a change of leadership when John Gutierrez was elected president.
Gonzalez said the term ‘Azkals’ no longer fit the new PFF leadership’s belief that every player in the national team are Filipinos, whether it’s based locally or internationally.
“When we first came in to the federation, it was decided as a group that since the team is evolving, it’s a new chapter, we would scrap the moniker of the Azkals because we feel that it already has its time and that we now don’t consider overseas-based players half-Filipino and we believe everyone is Filipino,” said Gonzalez in an interview with Inquirer’s Jonas Terrado.
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