Football, a lost art?

. PHOTO: AFP

The scene of thousands of spectators in the gallery with graceful colours and the scene of millions of fans celebrating outside the stadium raises one single thought in my hesitant mind..... could I be one of them?

Our football has a remarkable history. There are a few names that people still remember. Even in the late nineties the standard of our football was better than that of Pakistan, Sri Lanka, India etc. The teams from Iran, Iraq who used to visit us for international club tournaments also had to fight hard to win over us. But our football started sliding downward and the competitive attraction of the home league started to fade away -- match fixing, corruption crawled into football.

One of the reasons that football is neglected is our success in cricket. People are now more interested to invest time and money for cricket. Many football fans might argue it to be a conspiracy against the most popular sport of this place. Football did not see any notable success other than SAAF trophy which is a very localised one....cricket fans have a point. It is true. But at the same time it is important to dig out why football has failed to live up to the expectation and how cricket has managed to do it? May be the answer lies in our attitude toward the sport. We didn't patronise football as we did cricket. rather football was neglected in such a way that within a span of 10 years, our neighbours have crossed us comfortably. We are still obsessed by the SAAF trophy and the best we can do is to prepare for that.

I don't know what is our present FIFA ranking. Lastly, I knew it was beyond 140 and it is ever sliding. We cannot qualify for the Asian Cup, we cannot cross the pre-qualifiers of the world cup that can get a berth for the qualifiers. All we can do is to play in the substandard domestic leagues. Our Football Federation hardly has any plan to develop the infrastructure, and has no vision whatsoever. The worst of which is that football has no permanent stadium even today . Leagues are arranged during monsoon and the fields have no drainage system and football looks like mud polo.

This time Greece won the European cup which none had thought in their wildest dreams. In the last World Cup South Korea went up to the semi-finals and ended fourth, Turkey ended third. These teams were underdogs and to many they were unknown. So determined efforts can produce the desired results. When shall we realise this truth?

Congratulations to Greeks for winning the Euro 2004, beating Portugal. Greece is a perfect example of how much a weak team can improve with the help of a skilful and punctual coach. The reasons behind Greece's success are :

1. Excellent teamwork.

2. Strong defence.

3. A very good coach.

On the other hand, we saw stars like Beckham failing to score as he was exhausted by too much of club football. Spain, England, France and Italy where football is like a business, rather than a sport, failed to fulfil the expectations. But Greece, who were the underdogs, played superbly as a team and their talented players scored goals when they needed it.

Nayeem Islam The Aga Khan School, Uttara, Dhaka