With the start of the 2021 Copa Paulino Alcantara Cup, football fans are looking for United City Football Club, formerly known as the Ceres-Negros FC, however, the team failed to compete in the tournament.
United City FC, the defending Philippines Football League (PFL) champions, clarified issues as to why they weren’t able to participate in the ongoing Copa Alcantara competition.
In a statement released by the team management, it was stated that when United City FC took over the licenses from Ceres-Negros to rescue the club in July 2020, the parties signed an agreement outlining particular obligations to be fulfilled by Ceres-Negros. However, some have unfortunately not been met by the former club, as of this writing.
The former Bacolod-based team was under Negrense tycoon Leo Rey Yanson before selling it to Ceres-Negros to Eric M. Gottschalk’s Dubai-based MMC Sportz Asia, thus the changing of the name to United City.
“The United City franchise is being dragged into legal disputes brought by Ceres, a reason why they have to thoroughly look into this matter because their stakeholders are also getting affected. Since the legal actions were taken against the former Club Ceres-Negros have been registered with FIFA, it has now affected the United City FC Club license application for AFC competitions, which as of writing, is ‘provisional,” the statement read.
As of now the team is working hand-in-hand with the PFL and the Philippine Football Federation (PFF) to fix the issue. The manager also apologized to their fans for not seeing action in this year’s tournament. However, they assured that United FC will return stronger and bigger.IMT Sports
