Greg H was a regular contributor to the old Thai Football Webboard and one of the first people to start an independent English language website dedicated to a local league club - his Thunderdome Muang Thong Utd Fan Blog was born in September, 2009. After going into "hibernation" in February, 2013, he has kept a very low profile. However, I recently caught up with him and persuaded him to put pen to paper once again. Here's the result...
I got a shock last week when my Facebook profile came up with one of those pictures from the past labeled as “six years ago today”. It was me at a Muangthong United game with my son, one of those events that I’ve mentally filed under “a couple of years ago, maybe more” in my mind but sure enough, it was a darn sight longer ago.
Perhaps part of the reason that the time lapse seems surprising is because Thai football has stagnated, particularly in my area. When my work scheduled changed a few years back, I began to attend fewer Muangthong games and –despite the usual “bandwagon” accusations – I attended more games of then-second division Nonthaburi FC until the club essentially entered a kind of football version of purgatory. By finishing bottom of the lowest professional division, the club were forced to either enter the amateur league or take a year off. That “year off” has become a “few years off” and there seems to be no word on when or if they will return. Their stadium is now used by Siam FC.
As for Muangthong, their fortunes have almost mirrored the English club they are most often compared with: Manchester United. No longer are they the “team to beat” and for a while last season, they looked in genuine danger of relegation. Luckily the arrival of yet another new coach reversed their fortunes and they climbed back up the league, scoring a rare victory against rivals Buriram Utd on the way. The new coach has recently acknowledged that “the money is not what it once was”, underscoring that perhaps the perceived boom in Thai football a few years back has predictably tailed off. It’s been curtailed perhaps by a combination of factors including lack of planning or new stadiums, failure to eliminate problems on the pitch such as excessive time wasting and the same suspicions of a lack of transparency that permeate other aspects of Thai society.
The decline has been apparent in my recent visits to the Thunderdome stadium. The pre-match build up is a sad, whispering shadow of what it used to be and stands that were packed are now sometimes little more than half full for games against all but the top teams. Naysayers will claim this is an example of fair-weather fans departing a club, and the growth of Buriram Utd shirts on display all around Bangkok may support that, but I do believe it’s not the only reason.
It’s not all doom and gloom though. Dale’s Chonburi have probably benefitted from being the “big” club before the boom, and are still retaining their place among the big boys in the post-boom era, thanks to stable ownership and management. While Bangkok still contains a large number of premier league, oops, sorry, I mean “T1” clubs, non-capital based teams are making their way in such as Trat, Prachuap and champions Chiang Rai Utd.
Lower down the league, the Thai FA have finally acknowledged that maybe, just maybe, having more than 60 clubs competing for 3 promotional slots isn’t ideal and have taken the big step of adding an extra division, though there is still more to be done to make the lower leagues as competitive and healthy as they should be. In their quest to make football as accessible as possible, the league have allowed the creation of clubs that really are little more than a Sunday league team supported by 20 or 30 people. While it’s an admirable effort, I can’t help but wonder if fewer, but bigger and financially stronger, clubs in the lower tiers would be more enticing.
The future for Thai football, like so many things in this wonderful nation, is hard to predict. There’s no reason why Thailand can’t return to the “boom” days (yes I know, I’ve used the word loosely throughout this article) with a more healthy spread of planning and resources this time around. But to keep long-term growth and interest steady, the underlying problems mentioned beforehand need to be tackled honestly and thoroughly. That these seem problems are deeply embedded in cultural and perhaps even political aspects of society, means it’s hard to imagine where the solution could come from. Until then, we’ll just enjoy as much of the flashes of skill, the loyalty of the fans and the fun of a day at the footie as we can.
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