Football Media – making headlines for the wrong reasons!
It is indeed a sad story that whenever Sri Lanka Football ( SLF) makes news it is for dubious reasons. Cricket and other sports routinely take precedence over Football in the mass media and when it does finally creep into the headlines, more often than not, it is to describe woefully that SLF has been beaten once again or that our past national players have suffered the ignominy of having to dig graves to make a living!
Many football lovers will recall a past era when the media ventured to predict that SLF plans included a stab at the World Cup. Laughable as it was at the time, this canard was redolent of the kind of hype that Sri Lanka’s football charlatans fed the print media in particular, grandstanding and beating their chest to create the aura that all was well.
Of course this form of make believe was laid bare before long when we failed to perform successfully even in SAF tournaments. Today, we are now relegated to the bottom of the heap in the FIFA rankings. Regrettably, successive administrations followed suit with media responsibilities tucked conveniently under presidential prerogatives to hog the limelight and lose sight of the goals. For long we suffered sermons of grandiose plans and misplaced theories about how SLF was going to take on the world stage and give our young players the opportunities they deserved. Inevitably, all this ballyhoo ended in shameless consequences.
Media bandwagons were convened for conferences and cocktails and more of the latter brought a fairly raucous group of strange bedfellows. However, what both this preferred media and their football masters failed to realise was that football was played on a fairly visible pitch and not in the fancy auditoriums that had become their hunting ground.
Little wonder that constant defeat compelled these dullards to write fancy sto- ries of valiant surrender and conjure victories of the future! Instead of focusing on the job at hand, media gratifications became the norm and stories of international stardom festooned our tabloids with pictures of studied poses with international football superstars and clever FIFA/AFC Chieftains. This is no different today with the current administrators shamelessly taking to social media to showcase gallivanting in football capitals.
Desert frolics in Qatar and media talk shows in KL feature our officials participating in new office openings and perennial sub-committees as if they were god’s gift to football. Some of them who cannot put pen to paper represent Sri Lanka at media forums underlining once again that the FFSL Ex Co has lost its marbles and exposed its intellectual bankruptcy. It is plain to see that rewarding presidential handlers is top of the agenda, never mind plain good sense and savvy persons who know how to manage and nurture a credible media story. The absence of a Media Director at Football House further exacerbates this malaise and undermines the integrity of FFSL. As a result, the poor image of SLF nullifies efforts to develop the game with the support of worthy stakeholders and benevolent well wishers. That the powers that be do not realise the grave damage it is doing is indeed a sad indictment of a sport that is suffering at the hands of the very people who were voted to office to boost its fortunes.
If no specialist media team is available at FFSL, it is incumbent on the Secretary General to step into the breach and redeem the stature of Sri Lanka Football before it is too late. Unfortunately, a separate agenda and conflict of interest is distracting the incumbent from his primary tasks. Fortuitously, the rogue who ran away with FFSL funds it is reported has been taken into custody. But Sri Lanka Football has chosen not to make it known to the football public the exact position of this sad story. They must realise that the country needs to be told what happened and what is being done to rectify the situation. If this is not done transparently and the media engaged to make known the true facts, FFSL will pay the price of losing the support of important stakeholders.
FIFA & AFC have so far not seen the necessity of bringing the FFSL administration to task, though it is more concerned with governance issues of the Australian FA. Recently, the Minister of Sports lambasted Sri Lanka Cricket with an Interim Committee threat due to repeatedly poor performances but he has failed to assess the validity of an elected football body that cannot protect its own funds, nor assiduously manage the meager funds that it continues to receive from here and there.
It is very clear that media cannot merely mask a poor performance for long. What the FFSL should do is to marshal the media to create empathy among its many followers and bring to the fore key issues that it is addressing. KornerKick ( KK) over the last several weeks has attempted to do just that. It is not an attempt to belittle all that FFSL is trying to achieve. But it cannot condone lame duck excuses nor will it remain idle when the people who matter refuse to stand to reason and deliver on the mandate it was given. The media plays a key role in surfacing critical issues and provides an active forum for those lovers of the game to debate on what must be done and join in the crusade to bring back the glory of the world’s most loved sport, in our little corner of the universe.
It is time even as another year comes to an end, to make headlines for the right reasons. We can do it only, can unite in that noble cause and put our minds to the real issues at hand.
KornerKick wishes all Footballers and Football lovers in Sri Lanka, that it’s many goals come true in 2018. We shall be back with you in early January. Until then, Happy Holidays!