CHRISTMAS COMES EARLY IN CHONBURI (Un-edited Version)
by Peter Reeves
I was joined for tonight’s match by Wim and Carel, both coaches from Holland but working in Belgium, over for a week’s holiday after the Euro’s before travelling on to China on football related matters. Wim came last year and watched matches, including Chonburi with me, but it was Carel’s first time in Thailand. We all go back a long way.
At the end of the match my first thoughts were that you could have gone to the intensive care unit of the local hospital and picked a team that would have beaten Chainat tonight. I have got used to watching poor quality here, like many of us foreigners I suspect, you get used to it, almost conditioned to it, even make excuses for it as many do, you don’t really expect very much else most of the time, but this?
The first thing that Wim noticed was where were the fans, in what looked like a half empty stadium. After 5 minutes Carel asked me for the third time “this is premier league here, right” after Rodrigo had broke into the penalty area on the left side with two players free in the middle of an already non-existent Chainat defence, and blasted the ball somewhere but not to them or in the goal. It was just a short reprieve as on 6 minutes a square ball found 22 who scored with an easy finish, and 3 minutes later Nurul burst into the box from the right and should have done better.
The writing was on the wall and the Sharks were crawling all over them but Chonburi for some reason began to sit back and let what limited options were available to Chainat come forward and on 13 a speculative shot bounced off the bar. On 14 a dreadful square pass across the defence let Chainat in again but the forward played the ball forward instead of wide, to a player who was 4 yards offside. Another team that doesn’t understand the offside rule.
The pitch seemed boggy in places, probably the result of the midweek ‘battle of the Somme’ but it was clear the club had done very little to improve the surface. But why were Chonburi sitting back and letting Chainat come on to them? On 28 Dos Santos prevented an equalizer with a last ditch tackle after a through ball but it wasn’t long in coming. Terrible control of a bouncing ball in the area let a Chaniat player get control, out came the leg, down he went, Penalty, 1-1.
That seemed to wake Chonburi up and they actually ‘created’ a good goal for themselves which was well taken to go in 2-1 at half time. It hadn’t been good. Chonburi deserved to be in front, probably further in front, but it would have been very difficult not to have been. The same problems of poor formation, link play, and a lack of structure still evident but when you are playing this team it didn’t matter. The half time discussion revolved around the up-coming Ladies final at Wimbledon rather than the football we had just seen. But of what we had seen Wim was quiet, Carel waxed lyrical in his outspoken way but most of it unprintable here. It was to get worse, better or funnier depending on your viewpoint.
I am not going to go through all the goals in the second half, just a couple of points. Carel left us to take my dog out to play football in the garden after the Chainat keeper rushed out of his area and the ball bounced over his head for 3-1. He came back when it was over to say the dog could catch a ball in his mouth very well and thought the dog might get a game. The fifth where a Chainat defender, yes there did happen to be one around at the time, played a neat one two off his own post that left number 29 free to score but his ‘pass’, hardly a shot, from 3 yards was going wide until it was played straight back to him by another Chainat defender who had shown up as if to say ‘you missed, there you are, have another go.
Chainat pulled one back through this bloke that came with a ‘Liverpool pedigree’. No comment. I won’t say more on him, but he’s just got a culture shock! Welcome to Chainat! How very typical of Thai football that Chainat spend what must be a lot of money to bring a forward here who has some form of ‘perceived’ attributes as some form of misguided trophy purchase and yet ignore the fact that they have no defence and a goalkeeper who is just plain shocking. The ‘glory’ mentality that keeps a lot of Thai football largely in the middle ages.
Still the goals were going in, still Chonburi eagerly looking for more. They were rampant. But still no one on the Chainat bench thought about getting some form of defence organized for damage limitation. The Colonel Sanders look alike that purported to be their coach just watched on with his clipboard like nothing was happening. What was happening was that every time Chonburi attacked they scored at will as there was just no defence at all to stop them.
Even Rodrigo began to look effective. Perhaps they’d had enough and gone home. Will he still have a job on Monday? I began to feel really sorry for the good number of fans having made a long journey to watch this. If I’d been one of them it wouldn’t have happened again and by this time would have been half way home in disgust. There were a couple more incidents like the Chonburi number 29 lying on the floor after being fouled who lashed out and kicked a Chainat player, studs up. That is off I’m afraid whatever the provocation, which there had been. But then it was over, Chainat thankfully spared any more punishment. It could have been 10.
I am sure, and I fully understand why Sharks fans no doubt went home delirious with joy, I might have been the same as a fan, but as a neutral observer it hadn’t been good to watch. They were better everywhere and deserved the win obviously to the point of embarrassment but of the 7 goals scored, just one had been ‘created’ I suppose though that you don’t need to create at all when it was this easy. The others just plucked from the Christmas tree and offered up by the worst ‘defence’ I think I have ever seen. Anywhere.
Chonburi had not played like seven goals good, they were playing a team that played like ten goals bad. But in fairness you can only beat what’s put in front of you and they certainly did that. I have seen some very poor teams here in 2 years but nothing like this. Yes they are in trouble down the bottom, you don’t expect that much, but what on earth? Wim, ever the polite Dutchman simply said “standards have dropped in a year” I said ‘oh we are told they have got better’. He just looked at me. “I don’t think so” he said as we got our Douwe Egberts coffees.
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