Cambodia Diaries - 22 August 2008

The Beautiful Game

‘Great’, ‘Cambodian’ and ‘footballer’ are not words that necessarily go together in the same sentence.  In fact, let’s be honest, none come to mind and after three months here, I can confirm that there are no new challenging names on the horizon for you to start worrying about having to learn either!

Unlike most places in the world that I have ever been to, the locals are oblivious to their own football.  Soon after I arrived I asked some of my Cambodian colleagues and any Cambodian who spoke English about Cambodian football and who their team was? I invariably got the same response; a shoulder shrug, little laugh and a blank response.

One of my Cambodian colleagues when asked who he supported replied: “I like Manchester United and Chelsea!”   I naturally enquired as to why he didn’t have a Cambodian team and met with the response: “Cambodia teams very poor, English teams very good”. Having now been to a few Cambodian football games, I am certainly with him on the first point of his answer, Cambodian teams are not the best.

It’s not hard to see why the locals don’t go a bundle on their own football.  Firstly, well in the main it is crap I have to confess, but it’s not as if the country gets behind the Cambodian Premier League either.  You will struggle to find any information in the newspapers; I have yet to see a league table so I don’t know who is at the top or the bottom and as for a match report, well I have yet to see a reporter at a game.  The national team played in a pre-qualifying tournament for the ASEAN Cup and to get the crowd behind them, the local FA scheduled the midweek games at 3pm when people are working and so they hardly made the most of home advantage.  Needless to say, the mountain goats from Nepal walloped us, but we certainly sent the Macau boys back to their casinos with a good thrashing.  Palestine was a little pre-occupied with events back home and they decided not to come in the end.

The other factor is the sheer dominance of the English Premier League.  The games from back home and Italy for that matter, are on all the time, even when it’s pre-season you’ll get a couple of games each day being shown somewhere on the television system and whilst I have yet to see any type of Cambodian football shirt, I see plenty of United, Chelsea, Liverpool and Arsenal shirts.   

The games take place at the Olympic Stadium and with a few hundred people sat in a 40,000 seater stadium, it is not a cramped affair which is strange really as it’s free to get in…well no one has charged me yet! 

I have been going to games with Doug, a Canadian intern and whilst we have been entertained, it’s not necessarily through great football. Doug and I are now able to call how the game will pan out from the warm up and after last week’s game, we looked at each other and laughed whilst shaking our heads when the Postal FC players were doing their shooting practice.  Let us just say, the ball boys were well worked.

Yet again, Takeo didn’t bring any away fans!!

The crowd is polite, and you would struggle to determine who is supporting who, even when a goal goes in.  A pleasant afternoon is probably the best way to describe it for all concerned, not least for those that just turn up to use the vast empty terracing to run around whilst the game is on below them.  The cost of everything in English football is as many know, bloody expensive.  But it is free to get in and a half time libation is also very cheap.  A couple of bottles of water and a rake of peanuts for $2 all in and you’re good for the second half. 

There are gangs of street kids running all round the stadium looking for the empty bottles and cans to sell to survive.  But there is one lad we have seen at all the games we have gone to, who walks around as naked as the day he was born and no one batters an eyelid.  But he and his mates are too busy to worry about the game and being without clothes as there is money in what the few hundred fans discard and it really is a humbling site and one so far removed from what I ordinarily see in football stadiums around the world.

The sad reality of football for some kids in Cambodia

Doug and I have taken to sitting next to the King’s chair (not that he goes, he has more sense) and just behind the TV commentary gantry and such are the games that the viewers of Cambodian TV3 are treated to me hollering ‘Muppet’ after some error prone moment and a Canadian pissing himself laughing at another air-shot or cross that goes nowhere near the penalty box and sends a ball boy scurrying off for the ball.

The King’s Match day throne

The first game I attended featured the smallest player I have ever seen playing football and yet he ran rings around the opposition and worked wonders with the best player we have seen by a country mile who, with the only decent defender taken off (see below), helped himself to a hat-trick.  The biggest problem most of the players face doesn’t come from a lack of skill or mistimed tackles from the opposition, but due to the umbrellas that are situated around the pitch that act as extra advertising, but when the wind starts to blow around Phnom Penh, the brollies start flying around and the job specification of the ball boys changes dramatically.

Mr. Shaun Wright-Phillips Cambodian style

But the disparities between the English and Cambodian Premier Leagues do not end there.  The away team gets changed in the changing rooms, but the home team get ready by their dug out and both teams leave their kit bags on the sidelines by their dug outs during the game and the sight of players trying to recall which is their bag at the end is always a humbling spectacle to be seen.

Footballers the world over know the importance of keeping the valuables safe!

As is the fact that at the end of the game, the officials are escorted off the pitch and the crowd ambles on to the pitch to join in the teams’ post match debrief, whilst the players are changing.  The first game we went to the away team took off their one and only decent defender, an African lad, and I asked him was he taken off because of an injury?  Well let us say that he was very demonstrative in his response, bordering on nearly biting my head off and he was none to shy in suggesting that the coach was clueless and that several team mates were more suitable for the early bath.  Such a refreshing change form the media managed responses from the Premiership.

The post-match debrief, fans thoughts actively encouraged!

Of course, for those given the early bath there are none to soak in, or showers it seems.  The players just pick up their bag and leave the stadium.  I was getting a tuk-tuk home after one game and one of the players rode up on his bike in full kit, filled up and shot off.  WAGS and Ferraris are a long way off for the galacticos of the Cambodian Premier League.

Ferrari, Funky Buddha, Stringfellows and vacuous girl band singer?
Nope, ice pack and the moped home

However, there are many redeemable aspects to football in Cambodia and there are things that some more celebrated players in leagues around the world could do with learning a lesson from the game here.

The refereeing has been consistently good and they do not tolerate any attempts to con the ref, not that there is much diving.  Because the players maybe are not the best, tackles get mistimed but I have yet to see any retaliation and they accept the ref’s decision without question or any petulant acts either.  It is total refreshing and something many of us football fans can only recall from a bygone era.

The reality is, these guys are not much better then park footballers back home.  They are not professional and I guess they play for the love of the game and not much else and in my book that makes them stand head and shoulders above their more pampered brethren playing in Europe.  That said, the season is from May to August and these lads certainly have one hell of a close season to recover in.

But there is hope out there and at least some Cambodians have an idea about what is right in football…yup, I spotted one outside the stadium before a game.

The salvation for Cambodian football…two of us over here!!

Cheers

JH