CEBU CITY, Philippines — The reigning Copa Paulino Alcantara champions, the United City Football Club (UCFC), will not continue its campaign in the second half of the Philippines Football League (PFL) regular season.
This was officially announced on Thursday, Feb. 16, 2023 through its social media page.
In its statement, the UCFC management decided to not participate in the PFL due to their legal battles against its investor, the Riau Capital Live (RCL), which is based in Singapore.
“United City Football Club (UCFC) would like to announce that it has requested the Philippines Football Federation (PFF) to grant the Club “non participation” for the remaining 2022/23 Philippines Football League (PFL) while the Clubs awaits the outcome of legal proceedings in Singapore against its investor Riau Capital Live (RCL).
UCFC had signed a major agreement with RCL, a Singapore based real estate & sports investment entity in mid 2021, which the same company finally defaulted under in October 2022,” said the UCFC management in the statement.
With RCL’s failure to honor its agreed final settlement on the deadline for UCFC, the club was forced to shut down its operations temporarily for its professional football club which is currently ranked No. 2 in the team standings.
UCFC has 24 points in the seven-team league of the PFL with seven wins, three draws, and one loss. They are six points behind league-leader Kaya FC Iloilo which has 30 points from 10-0-2 (win-draw-loss) card.
Behind UCFC is Cebu’s very own Cebu Football Club (CFC) Gentle Giants with 21 points from its 6-3-1 (win-draw-loss) slate.
Major changes
With this development, there will be major changes in the team standings of the league with CFC moving up to the second spot, while the No. 4 team, the Azkals Developmental Team with 15 points will likely take the No. 3 spot.
Also, CFC got the services from one of UCFC’s reliable starters and forward Ivan Ouano of Cebu after all of the club’s players and staff were released immediately before the start of the second half of the season tomorrow in Manila.
UCFC in its statement vowed to pursue legal actions against its investor to recover from this ordeal.
“The Club would like to extend its tremendous gratitude to the players, staff and its management for its professional handling of this very stressful period of time during which the team still managed to win the Copa Alcantara and to finish the first half of the 2022/23 PFL season in second place and to wish everyone the very best in their respective new career,” said UCFC management.
CFC is supposed to face UCFC on Feb. 26 and April 29 this year in the second half of the PFL.
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