Yellow Cab Pizza Co. and Kaya Futbol Club will be hosting the newly formed Yellow Cab Football Cup, a partnership and tourney with the aim of promoting football, camaraderie, and good values to the nation’s youth.
“Every company under the Max’s Group has an initiative to reach out and give back to the communities that we cater to,” said MGI president and Yellow Cab coach Robert Trota. “As a company, we have a belief that we should always give back to our communities. Yellow Cab being part of the Max’s Group aligns with this belief and we want to extend the help that we give for it to become more far-reaching.”
“Yellow Cab has always been associated with sports,” Trota continued. “Back then we had a cycling team, a drift team, and a Yellow Cab Tri Clark Team. Now that football is gaining a significant following, especially with the Azkals representing the country, we thought that Yellow Cab would do a good job with a football program geared towards the youth, because not all the other brands are into sports.”
“We believe that playing a sport like Football can teach us values that could help change our lives, most especially kids,” added MGI chief marketing officer and board director Jim Fuentebella. “Even my son plays football. We want this program to reach out to the thousands of Filipino youth especially those who do not have access to formal training and to properly execute this program we needed the expertise of an organization like Kaya Futbol Club.”
“We found that we shared similar values with Kaya FC,” Fuentebella pointed out. “We both value giving back to the community and working with integrity, respect, and perseverance.”
Kaya FC is a football association founded in 1996 and is a member of the National Capital Region Football Association. It is also a member of the country’s premier United Football League. The association also operates Kaya FC Academy, a youth development football academy that aims to promote the game of football to the youth through a grassroots program. Some notable names in the field who have gone on to represent the Philippines in international tournaments came from Kaya FC, including Aly Borromeo, Chris Greatwich, Anton del Rosario, Eddie Mallari, Lexton Moy, Nate Burkey, and Jason Sabio.
“Partners are quite difficult for us to find since football is a fairly young sport in the Philippines,” said Kaya FC general manager Paul Tolentino. “It’s great that Yellow Cab opened up this opportunity, because here’s a brand that is genuinely interested in sports and even shares the same values for giving back like we do. With the massive support of the Max’s Group, we’re able to help more kids, and give more of them the chance to play.”
With the brands’ shared values, the Yellow Cab Football Cup was formed. The Cup will have six categories divided into age groups. The six finalists will receive a total of PHP 120,000 which they will donate to their chosen charitable institutions. The tourney will kick off at the Gatorade Blue Pitch at Circuit Makati, with eliminations starting on October 15 and semi-finals and finals on October 22.
Registration for the cup is open until September 25. Interested teams can apply here.
In photo above: (top left to right) MGI chief marketing officer and board director Jim Fuentebella, Chris Greatwich, Masa Omura, Kenshiro Daniels, Adam Reed, Paul Tolentino, and MGI marketing operations manager Charlene Sapina; (bottom left to right): Yellow Cab marketing manager Coochy Mamaclay, Jovin Bedic, Shirmar Felongco, Janrick Soriano, Julian Matthews, and Aly Borromeo.