It’s only nine days ‘til the World Cup, but we couldn’t care less. The average Filipino doesn’t care about football, unless he’s a sports bettor or a football fanatic. He would much rather watch the NBA Finals, which only captures the imagination of the Americans, than the biggest multicultural sporting event which captures the hearts and minds of the entire world.

In places like Brazil, England and Italy, entire nations live and die with their teams and worship their players to the point of godhood. In the Philippines, basketball imports grab more headlines. But did you know that one of the football’s first legends was a Filipino?

His name was Paulino Alcantara, and he was one of the deadliest strikers the world had ever seen.

Born in 1896 to a Spanish-Filipino couple in Iloilo, he moved to Spain as an adolescent to play for FC Galeno. It was here that he was discovered by FC Barcelona, one of the most successful clubs in football history, and he made his first team debut in a game against Catala SC at the tender age of 15.

Barcelona won that game 9-0, and Alcantara scored the first three goals, which in today’s game would be called a “hat-trick.” Even today’s superstars would struggle to score a hat-trick.

His career in Barcelona spanned fifteen years, from 1912 to 1927, with a stint in the Philippines in between. He scored 357 goals in 357 games. That’s a ratio of one goal per match; today even the best strikers don’t normally come close. His total is also the highest in club history, surpassing even the legendary Pichichi after whom the Spanish league’s scoring title is named.

Scoring goals was his biggest claim to fame. In a game against France on April 30, 1922, he hit a shot so hard that it ripped through the net — the footballing equivalent of shattering a backboard with a slam dunk. No wonder the fans called him “El Rompe Redes,” or the net breaker.

He retired at 31 — at an age when most professional athletes would be at their peak — to become a doctor. During his stint, Barça won five Spanish championships and 10 Catalan titles. At his peak, he represented both the Spanish and Philippine national teams. He is officially recognized as a club legend, alongside names such as Cruyff, Ronaldo, Ronaldinho and Maradona. To this day, he remains the youngest player to play or score for the club, and was the first Asian ever to play for a European team.

Most of all, he was Filipino.

Coming from a country that calls football ‘soccer,’ Paulino Alcantara sounds like the stuff of fancy. If one of my friends had told me about him over a round of drinks in a sports bar, I would’ve thought he was pulling my leg. Yet Paulino Alcantara is real as Jose Rizal was real. His records and achievements are historical fact. That we produced a talent like him in football is hard to believe, hailing from a nation currently ranked 169th in the FIFA World Rankings.

But as it turns out, it isn’t. For all my yammering about his being Filipino, his talent was discovered and harnessed in Spain. He mostly plied his trade in Spain. He took his medical exams in the Philippines (and missed the 1920 Olympics for it!), but he went on to practice in Spain. He was born in Iloilo, but he died in Barcelona.

Still, I can’t help but identify with him by the fact of his blood. We always like to talk about Filipinos conquering the world; it turns out we were doing so even before we were aware of it. We speak of larger-than-life athletes who have shaped their respective games, and our national identity in so doing; we derive great pride from internationally-recognized names such as Efren Bata Reyes and the American-trained Manny Pacquiao.

But before Manny Pacquiao, there was Paulino Alcantara.

The author is a second year BS Management major at the Ateneo de Manila University.