Tipping Point: Now The Provinces Call The Shots
by Matt Riley
Season-ending attendance averages dismantle the myth of an all-powerful Bangkok-based elite and describe a new football landscape unheard of a decade ago. The Thai FA have been ambushed while futilely propping up poorly-supported Bangkok teams and two crumbling national stadiums whilst provincial clubs have coalesced with burgeoning political clout. When teams like Singhtarua dare to stand up to the FAT they direct all their poisonous vengeance into destroying one of Bangkok's most community-based clubs to protect highly-connected Police United rattling around a cavernous and largely empty stadium with the only big numbers nestled in the player's back pockets. Obsessed with destroying all dissenters, the FAT have overlooked how this is weakening still further their power base by destroying a vibrant and well-supported capital city club simply to send a message out to other dissenters.
Finally waking up to the provincial tidal wave, Siam Sport are exerting increasing control over newly-promoted Nakhon Ratchasima, but the horse has not only bolted but started a new family in a distant field. So desperate are the FAT to kill Singhtarua, they forget that next season three provincial teams will join the TPL who, just like The Port Lions, will be furiously independent of Thai football's organisational vortex. With two Bangkok-based teams going down, they will also bring higher league attendances than all but two of the capital clubs.
Thailand has a huge population dominance by Bangkok. Chiang Mai is considered the Kingdom's Second City but has five million less inhabitants and is the sixth biggest by population. Like any country with one overpowering capital city that, like London, exists in its own economic universe, there is a tendency to arrogance and an assumption that other areas exist simply to further their economic and political interests. England has sleepy county councils for local areas, not single families as we see here, so are not a platform for the interest of a handful of relatives. Provinces here are finding their voices and can, unlike Bangkok, mobilise big crowds who see the progress of their football team as a mouthpiece for their profile within a country that previously ignored their interests.
This huge capital versus country attendance disparity shows that Bangkok fans (especially for clubs that bear its name) often have little time for the beautiful game, but their clubs have a disproportionate amount of political power. Buriram United dominate the attendance table, doubling the total of nearest rivals Suphanburi. SCG Muang Thong United come in third but they, with Bangkok Glass, are the only Bangkok clubs in the top ten. One part of the attendance table is dominated by capital city clubs: the bottom.
Although technically based in Saraburi, Osotspa have been Rajamangala National Stadium lodgers this season, so eight of the ten worst supported sides are from the capital city. Even more worrying for Bangkok-based clubs is that five of the bottom six attended clubs survived and will be blown away next season by Nakhon Ratchasima (who pull in crowds similar to Buriram United). Whilst fellow promoted clubs Saraburi and Navy only have grounds with ten and twelve thousand capacities respectively, they are certain to improve on the abysmal average of just over one thousand for TOT.
Mired in Dark Politics, the Thai FA have treated provincial clubs as third class organisations who should be grateful to bask in the glow of their largesse. Ten years ago this scenario was heavily weighted in their favour, but they ignored provincial politicians who demanded increasingly stridently the chance to produce success to use as political platforms. Newin Chidchop is the default setting for rebelling against the FA-based complacency, but he has been joined by a posse of often elder statesmen placing their sons in charge of clubs.
Chiang Rai, Ratchaburi and Suphanburi are three examples of men minding the shop for dad, with the football club serving as a conduit for the political ambitions of both generations. What Siam Sport have failed to understand is that the height of their ambitions is no longer to bend at the knee to their Bangkok masters, but get a full return on their investments and a share of the limelight. Talk of a splinter provincial league may be sabre-rattling brinksmanship, but it would certainly survive and attract the kind of sponsorship that used to be monopolised by Bangkok clubs. Looking at the long line of suitors keen to produce Nakhon Ratchasima's kit for next season illustrates this brand new landscape.
Provincial clubs have outmanoeuvred the complacent Bangkok dinosaurs by the way they make alliances. For capital city clubs, they use "parked" players in strategic clubs to exert control from above. When voting time comes around, the money given to all clubs through Siam Sport is highlighted and suggestions made that it will cease to flow if Worawi Makudi is voted out. This rule by veiled threat and autocratic control is the mindset of a slave owner. Inter-provincial relationships are based much more on parity and favours bought and sold over longer periods of time.
Whilst it's best not to look too closely at what is done to grease the wheels of collegiality, the way it is conducted is not to destroy or control but sustain and develop political and regional connections. This has stitched together a tapestry of alliances that, for the first time, have no fear of the FAT and can essentially function as if it simply didn't exist.They are beginning to flex their collective muscles as a loose federation of regional states that has the collegial power to storm the Bastille of Buffoons that run the Thai game. They can replace it with a much more egalitarian, fraternal and wide-based collective that, although flawed along different fault lines, gives a voice to clubs who have been gagged for far too long.
Viva La Revolution.
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