TPL
Super Power Samut Prakan 1-4 Chonburi
Samut Prakan SAT Stadium
Attendance: 847
Saturday 1st July, 2017
Match Report
by Peter Reeves
You can’t but help feel sorry for Super Power Samut Prakan FC. Situated in a good catchment area just south of the capital they have a population of over a million and being in proximity to other population centres are a real possibility for sound and prolonged development.
So what is wrong? They like some other Thai clubs are ruled by their sponsors. Businesses that are successful in the main at other activities, but not football. The clubs themselves desperate for sponsor’s cash go along with any demands their masters make. The sponsors see them not as a football club but as an extension to their marketing profile of their own business, not caring a jot about what is best for the club or more importantly the fans. If they treated their own customers with the same arrogance and disinterest they would be broke. Which is why most Thai clubs are. To justify just look at attendances to see how the communities regard their clubs. Clubs run clubs, sponsors do not!
It’s not only Super Power. Thai Honda, Nakhon Ratchasima Mazda, Bangkok United and True just for starters. Clubs who have sponsors at the heart of the business of football management and decision making, on a subject they know little about. In fact if you look at the clubs who are completely autonomous to their sponsors and actually appear football clubs there are few. The visitors today Chonburi being one, another Buriram. Sponsorship is about support not control. Yes, use the club as a profile building exercise for the sponsors’ essential business, but only that.
Super Power formed under the name of Osotsapa, a drinks company, have suffered. Not set up in the name of the city or province, in the name of an energy drink. Yep, that’s going to work. And now when the energy didn’t seem to sustain you after all and it didn’t work what do we have. Super Power. That has to be a joke right? I refuse to refer to the club as that. It’s embarrassing. I shall refer to them henceforth as SP- Samut Prakan that is.
They say when you are down at the bottom you get no luck. Very true. Poor little SP just one point from 21 games, more coaches than points this season have really lost the plot off the field even though they have a few decent players and a small support who waved their flags for the whole match.
They played reasonably well. In the first couple of minutes they created a decent chance which was wasted with a poor shot and were getting far too much space around the Sharks’ box. Chonburi were edgy and after the week they’ve had it’s not surprising. They created a chance on 12 minutes when Kroekrit went through on goal but our much lauded ‘international’ made a complete mess of it.
On 15 the first ‘incident’. A SP free kick rebounded out and was hit home. A home player standing offside yes but interfering? Probably not and in most ‘professional’ football that would have been allowed. With a ref that has no concept at all about offside anyway judging interference was a bridge too far for the brain cell. Disallowed.
And so we reach 25 minutes and apart from Kroekrit’s laughable effort and a header from Marques tipped over, Chonburi had made no inroads. SP looked comfortable, but when you’re down and out you often just wait for lady luck to play its inevitable hand. It started on the 32nd minute as a cross in was not cleared by a defender who reacted far too late and a Marques effort drifted in for 0-1. Couple of inches higher it would have hit the bar, a couple lower the keeper would have saved it but no when you’re down you stay there. Marques of course didn’t control it there, it just went. Guided more by inevitability than the player.
SP heads went down a bit and on 40 another nail in the coffin. A ball over the top to Cunha was clearly offside and he ran on for 0-2. Just to clarify for our official it’s when the ball is played not when the player gets it. Half time. Chonburi worth a 2-0 lead? Hardly.
Didn’t take long for the ref to decide that the first offside wasn’t controversial enough as a ball to Nurul saw two of them in offside positions. 0-3 and game over. A Marques 4th from close range and the SP penalty were irrelevant.
The officials are actually getting worse. After a fury of discipline in the first few weeks of their tenure, the powers that be in the TPL after promising to improve official’s performance have become very quiet. I wonder if any of them actually watch these games, but then I am reminded it wouldn’t matter as they haven’t a clue what they are looking at anyway.
SP have gone now they might as well accept that and start preparing for next season and putting everything into place for a sustainable challenge on and off the field. I wonder what they will be called next year?
Chonburi finally get a win, but hardly convincing and but for three very poor decisions and some poor finishing that handed the game to them on a plate, it could have been a different reaction amongst the blue faithful.
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