A European missionary priest, prodded by religious zeal and an inner voice from his past, starts an unthinkable project in one of Manila’s impoverished district. From the young rabble of Tondo, he sought to build a fighting team for a football tournament.
Football. In an Americanized country whose other major religion is basketball.
Nothing can stop the obstinately crazy Fr. Jose from his mission. He recruits Bro. Pedro, a young acolyte from the seminary who happens to be a former college football star, and sets out to build his football field in the most crowded part of Manila.
Together, they recruit the most unlikely group of young men — OBET, the local basketball star; RAMIL, a skilled pickpocket and fearless thief; OMPONG and KONYAT, the drug-sniffing brothers who live off the garbage dump; IAN a hare-lipped rapper wannabe; TOTOY a gang leader; DAVID a pedicab driver; and others.
The young men were lured by the dream of winning the tournament’s hefty cash prize. And to win, they only have to do one thing — beat their opponents from the “rich catholic schools.”
Set against the colorfully claustrophobic panorama that is uniquely Tondo, this coming-of-age story about poor young kids who learned to dream and dared to fight for their simple goal is based on real events.
Tondo used to be the site of a smoking mountain of trash. That ugly symbol of urban decay is gone now, levelled by government bulldozers, replaced by substandard and cramped residential buildings for the poor.
But the cruel irony is not lost on its residents, they named their decrepit community “Happyland,” which comes from the word “hapilan” — a Visayan word for “garbage dump.”
The Philippines, after producing a stellar world-class football striker in 1937 — Paulino Alcantara of FC Barcelona — remain, to this day, a consistent bottom-feeder and a poor outsider to the World Cup games.
To those who pray for better days, “Happyland” carries a message of hope from the past.
For more than two decades, several generation of young men rose from the garbage dump to seek glorious victory.
Despite material deprivation — none of them could afford to buy a decent pair of football shoes — they fought hard. The exploits of these young boys are still re-told in many gatherings of many football players.
Nobody knows what became of these fearsome opponents — only their stories remain. Thet are remembered as the “legendary barefoot players” of Tondo.