Of mice and football
By Biplav Gautam
(1998)

M-I-C ------ K-E-Y------M-O-U-S-E! No, it is not the sweet voices of the little kids in the Mickey Mouse Club singing the anthem to their rodent hero you are hearing. Actually those sounds come halfway around the world from the Disney studious in Orlando, Florida. They are the bitter cries of hardcore football fans that sit in the dilapidated stadiums and are subjected to game that is supposed to be football on the cow grazed pitches that are found in the “tiny and poor” Himalayan Kingdom of Nepal.

The word “tiny and poor” in quotes as that is the excuse that the football authorities in Nepal will give to explain the dismal state of football in Nepal. “We are a tiny and poor nation therefore we can not run a proper league like the rest of the world,” the authorities will tell you. Perhaps it should be asked if that same fact is also the reason why the All Nepal Football Association (ANFA), one of the best endowed associations in all of Nepal, can not create an internet web-site when everyone and their brother in Nepal seems to be launching one, do not have an email address, can not give their national team coach the form to vote for the FIFA Player of the Year Award on time, ban smoking at the national stadium, give the Nepal Footballer of the Year award to someone who is still playing for the national team, put-out timely press-releases or even buy matching socks as a part of the national team uniform.

It seems as though the fact that Nepal is so “tiny and poor” stops the ANFA from doing anything altogether. Sure they will boast about the ANFA Academy and their new offices and some project here and there, but all it means is that they are not as stupid as the public may think because at least they know to do enough to make FIFA and the AFC not cut their annual stipends that amount to millions of Nepali Rupees. Luckily for the ANFA, our big brothers to the south – India, are in such a pathetic state football wise, that the FIFA and the AFC have bigger fish to fry, so to speak, and the Nepali authorities can get away with whatever they do [not do].

Nepal has a population of 22 million people or roughly 20 times that of Jamaica, 5 times greater than Norway, Denmark and Croatia and larger than at least 1/3 of the World Cup participants. Guess we can throw the size argument out the window immediately then, huh? Perhaps the ANFA should also note that we are 22 times larger than the Maldives and they still found a ways of beating us twice in the last SAFF Cup in Goa, India.

Poor – well they do have a point there. Nepal is very poor compared to the rest of the world. Fortunately, the ANFA is not! They receive the highest funding of all the national sports associations from the Ministry of Sport and get the aforementioned funding from FIFA and the AFC. While it easy to say that Nepal is poor, let us not so easily accept that excuse from the ANFA. Perhaps they would care to explain why nations that are poorer than Nepal, most of who lie in Africa, can manage to run a proper domestic league, cup and youth program despite great civil unrest and massive corruption.

The fact of the matter is that the people who run football in Nepal are either corrupt, incompetent or perhaps both. If the money meant for football development is going into their own coffers, than our officials are corrupt and should be thrown-out of office. If the money is all being honestly utilized, than our officials are incompetent because obviously that money is not being properly spent as we still lack the most basic football infrastructures, most notably a proper league, cup, or youth policy and therefore the officials should be thrown-out. The constant is that we need new people in charge of Nepali football who are unselfish, have a vision and a better understanding of the science of modern day football.

The one thing that just boggles the mind is that to understand the importance of a national league you do not need to have great vision, just a basic understanding of modern day football. Having spoken to a very high ranking official within the ANFA, it can honestly be said that there are some big-shot figures, one in particular, that has absolutely no resolve in instituting a national league and is content and actually feels that the current “Mickey-mouse” tournaments that take place all across Nepal is enough to get Nepal into the upper echelons of Asian football.

In case that official and others in his circle might just have a change of opinion, they can feel free to contact the NFFC if they need spoon feeding on all aspects of properly starting and running a national league (A gesture only suited to be openly offered in a Nepali publication : -)