Football in Sri Lanka has been destroyed wholesale and it was rather amusing to hear that the new minister of sports and officials running the Football Federation have made statements to the effect that they will popularize and develop football in the country.
This is the biggest insult that one could ever hear about football in this country. Football was once a sport for everyone in this country whether they were rich or poor but today due to the frolics and whims and fancies of some egoistic administrators it is no more a poor man’s game but a dead sport. Thank God those gentlemen who administered the game in those days and the millions of followers of the past are not living on this land anymore to see what has happened to their favourite sport.
Today’s football administrators are worse than some of our politicians in their utterances. Before telling the country that they could revive football, they should first tell the people why Sri Lanka is not contesting the on-going Asia Cup that has a team even like Palestine in the running. Football must be the only sport that does not give Sri Lanka a place even at home in Asia.
Not so long ago we had Manilal Fernando functioning as the governor general of football in the country and when he left, football was in a most unhealthy situation. His successors are no different and all we hear about them is squabbling and bickering while the game rots in a grave.
Sri Lanka even lost to Afghanistan which is a country that was ruined and battered by invading armies of Russia and the USA and later by Taliban bombings and killings.
Unlike in the past one can today count the number of football spectators at a match. Today there are five times the number of spectators at a school rugby match than one could find at a club football match these days.
Football will never be revived in this country as long as we have officials who enter the game’s administration to serve themselves and they are found only in Sri Lanka. All they are good at is going overseas to attend meetings and forums or take part in public functions and make utterances to hoodwink the people who are sick and tired of the antics of these officials past or present.
God knows for how long this present minister of sports will be the minister of sports. Sri Lanka has had five sports ministers in five years. Our biggest mistake was kicking out the British from this country. My sincere thanks to the Sunday Observer for giving us ordinary people a public platform to air our views and tell these sports administrators not to fool us like politicians.
Jude D Fernando , Moratuwa