Can Sri Lanka Football ever recover from its downward spiral?
View(s):
At the moment of victory for Present FFSL President Anura de Silva, R. Puvendran (R) was his right-hand man
The hosannas that heralded the entry of Sri Lanka’s high-profile coach Rumy Packeer Ali seems like a distant cry. Every outing now seems like another nail in the coffin, with the constant grandstanding by tour managers making the joke, a tragedy! In the ongoing AFC Championship, Palestine slaughtered the local lads 9:0 and then Bahrain added injury to insult by conjuring a similar score line. Bangladesh added to the misery and Sri Lanka is now licking its wounds with a 2-0 goal deficit, to show for all its filibuster in the media before embarking on another dismal tour. So, what does this portend for Sri Lanka Football? With no interest shown from any quarter, should we prolong this agony any longer? What really is the way forward, because all the commentary in the traditional & social media, appears not to bother the powers that be? With national elections looming ahead, for the Hon. Minister of Sports (MOS), Football must be the last thing on his mind! He has enough on his plate to consider and therefore, adding one more morsel is not even appetizing to look at right now. It did not deter him though from attending the banquet to felicitate the visit of the Qatari FA President, the host of the next World Cup. But this is the tragi-comedy of Sri Lanka Football; make merry even when the ignominy of defeat is staring you in the face!
The Vivo IPL in India and the forthcoming Cricket World Cup in England will offer enough distraction to keep Sri Lanka football away from the floodlights. With the sports loving public glued to the TV and the tabloids with an overdose of Cricket, Football will be lucky to even get a mention ahead of a village school playing their Big Match! In fact, an U13 cricket match gets better coverage! But for those die-hard football fans who go to great lengths to watch the games in Bahrain, all they see is our weerayas in their emblazoned blazers hobnobbing with enthusiastic festooned football chiefs condescendingly entertaining our tour party. There is no vestige of shame as we continue to join the circuits in Asia and expose the abject poverty of Sri Lanka Football to the world. Why the MOS approves such junkets is anybody’s guess but the show goes on, so that the fund flows can continue unabated in order to line greasy pockets, filled with filthy lucre!
The Qatar delegation was hosted by the FFSL to a dinner, where Sports Minister Harin Fernando too made his presence
One can only imagine how far we have regressed in this once glorious sport. The great names of the past are a forgotten memory and it is no surprise that no one even knows the players who make up the present squad. Ask any football administrator to name the Sri Lanka cricket team and they will rattle off the top twenty, but their own football team players are an unknown, unheralded quantity! Much has been said about the youth players, their nurseries and the academies, but they all seem mired in make-believe show pieces that pass off as football carnivals. Development based on a sound technical platform that is cognizant of regional and world standards is non-existent and that the fuddy – daddy’s of Football House are as usual busy scanning the next tour schedules! What can poor Rumy Packeer Ally, our Chief Coach do; his island-wide scouting is to pick more lambs to slaughter! These youth hardly benefit from a sport that is now completely subjugated by an administrative cadre that knows next to nothing about basic management. FIFA & AFC must share the blame for this misplaced supervision of an affiliate. Money that is not aligned to performance is the root cause of this total breakdown in standards and results. Why would one need to do the hard work and proffer accountability when the dollars keep rolling in to sustain a vote bank and maintain fiefdoms?
It is in this context that the recent spat hit the headlines in the vernacular press last week. Senior FFSL member and a stalwart of the City Football League, R. Puvandran came out of the shackles to lambast Football Chief Anura de Silva likening him to a puppet on a string. In a hard-hitting press interview, he has laid the blame for this state of affairs squarely on the FFSL President and pleads with the youthful MOS to do something about it without further delay. Whether this is a momentary distraction in a home and home match is left to be seen, but we do not have to depend on disillusioned mavericks to know that football is in its death throes.
A top Football International called KornerKick to ask if the MOS cannot be reached to explain this dire situation. All we said is that we will try as we have done these last few months. Until then, it looks as if the down ward spiral will continue to drive football to the ground.