Thailand - Where Trash Talking Comes As Standard by Matt Riley: 2014

Thailand: Where Trash Talking Comes As Standard

by Matt Riley

4th December, 2014

In English football, mumbled press conference platitudes bleat; "they are an excellent team so we need to play our best. We know how dangerous Hartlepool can be, so even though we are in the EPL we expect a really tough game." In Thailand, things are just a little different...

Over the years I have sat through dozens of Thai pre-match press conferences astonished at the words I hear. Like the laughable invitation to Uruguay for a friendly last month, Thai clubs will often announce invitations and signings as done deals before redacting history once the inbox falls silent. In the West, coaches would be pilloried post-match for their outlandish predictions and lack of respect to the opposition, but in Thailand the need to save face means crazy pre-match claims are not referred back to. Coaches will reveal formations, player injuries and  predictions for the final score. Seemingly paradoxically in the Kingdom where respect is seen as a key societal plank, coaches will often boldly state that they are the better team and a win is expected.

Notoriously last May in the Thai Premier League, the precursor to the SCG Muang Thong United match with Suphanburi saw the home side's official media bark out that their opposition was "not in our class." This proved to be correct, but they needed to look higher rather than lower in the class rank to find their opponents who romped to a 5:2 victory. In England this would have caused huge resentment and anger, but here it was only us expats who got hot under the collar. The "jai yen yen" approach of Thais where extremes of emotion are shied away from meant that, after a stadium-based party at the end of the game, a neutral onlooker watching Suphanburi fans file out of the SCG stadium would have been unsure who won and who just suffered their worst ever defeat.

What disorientates Westerners is that these statements aren't delivered like boxers desperately drumming up ticket sales with outlandish threats and promises of war but, like many seemingly contradictory aspects of living in Thailand, the comments are offered as statements before the fact.

The latest bold morsel of Thai-style trash talking comes from Head Coach Kiatisuk before Thailand's AFF Suzuki Cup semi-final on Saturday: "Their players are good technically and we cannot underestimate them. But many of them are slow and past their prime."

Even by the normal standards of breathtakingly directness, this is bold. Seemingly a quote to be pinned to the Philippine dressing room wall as inspiration or disrespectful to the highest-ranking FIFA team in ASEAN, today's Thai papers simply carried it neutrally and as a matter of obvious fact.

East or West, which is best? Snore-fest or startling honesty: give me an outrageously direct Thai pre-match where cards are not held close to the chest but scattered across the floor any day. 

Long live the madness.