Baseball team

Kaya–Iloilo

Club · Philippines · PFL

«The Lions»

143 Matches

87 wins

12 draws

44 losses

393–167 Goals

+226 Difference

2.7 Scored per game

Form W W L L W W

Chris Hagedorn, Bob Kovach, Rudy del Rosario and John-Rey "Lupoy" Bela-ong put the club together in Makati in July 1996. For years it stayed a Manila side under the name Kaya Futbol Club, until a 2018 agreement between owner Santi Araneta and the governor of Iloilo, Arthur Defensor Sr., sent it south. The Visayas region had a reputation as a football stronghold with no club of its own at that level, and Kaya took the name Kaya FC–Iloilo to mark the move.

The gold-and-black colours stayed, and so did a crest detail that has nothing to do with either city: red and green drawn from the Pan-African palette tied to Rastafarianism. Since the shift south, "The Lions" have not so much competed for the Philippines Football League as owned it, taking the title in four straight seasons. Domestic silverware has piled up alongside it, including three runs to the top of the Copa Paulino Alcantara. Continental football has proven a harder ceiling: a group-stage finish in the 2021 AFC Champions League remains the club's best showing in Asia.

Games against Visayas rivals get billed locally as the "Visayas Clásico," a label that would have made little sense before 2018 and now anchors the club's identity on the island. Iloilo Sports Complex holds the home crowd at 7,000, a number the Asian Football Confederation has judged too modest a venue for its own sanctioned fixtures — which is why Kaya's continental nights are often played out instead at the Rizal Memorial Football Stadium, back in the city it left behind.