Dare to be “Little Brazil”?... Imagine!

In the late nineties a little island near Male’, by the name of HURAA became a football icon. They contributed eight players to the National Team that eventually lost to India in the Goa SAFF Cup. At that competition commentators referred to Huraa as the “little Brazil” of Maldives. The fact however is, that it is not only the island of Huraa that is a little Brazil. Most of our 200 inhabited islands are teaming with talent. The whole of Maldives can be turned into a little Brazil if the we dare take up such a challenge?

Now that we have won the SAFF Cup and our football loving public have shown us in what high regard they held football success, our government school system will be forced to admit that their kids love football. In our island communities young fishermen and kids alike, lighten up their life with a kick around. The typical island village support a thousand or so people. A baby boom has created an enormous pool of talent on the streets of our peaceful islands. Safe island streets are home to neighborhood teams. Schools are usually forced to make at times half hearted attempts to have a competition of sorts at least once a year or less. Football Kids have not been taken seriously in the past.

Older island players visit neighboring islands seeking competition. The annual Atoll, Zone and Nationals are unable to cater for the mass of kids, amateur and recreational players hungry for organized competition. Football need a major "sport for all" type approach to tap this potential.

WASTED TALENT
What I am trying to get across here very quickly is that the present football system in the Maldives is not tapping this immense talent pool. It merely scratches the surface. But we have made many finals at the South Asia level and eventually won Gold by beating mighty India all the same. Just for good measure, we have tickled both China and South Korea in past World Cup qualifiers. Wonderful spirit!

MANAGEMENT
We have a badly managed, but elaborate school system. We also have a badly managed but regular club competition. Both managed directly by government officials. The problem is we have not moved with the times.

The FAM is stuck with an old idea. There are glimmers of hope however. Unrecognized and unforeseen to the "authorities", there is an emerging football culture of localized island and atoll based competitions initiated by socially enterprising island based clubs. They visit other islands seeking competition and invite teams from neighboring islands to play in small centralized format mostly to celebrate occasions such as both Eids. A problem they face however is the lack of Referees!

The government run FAM has failed to satisfy the appetite for football in more ways than one. They have concentrated on building a football structure only on the capital island. Male’ have an elaborate league of 6, 10 and 12 teams in first, second and third divisions respectively. The Male’ based inter school competition initiated in the mid eighties that provided the last generation of players have all but disappeared within a decade.

There is no point talking about President Gayyoom’s stream of mad sports ministers and other senior “government officials” in sectors such as Education, Atolls and Tourism who have impacted sport. Their total disregard for sport as a worthy developmental tool have dashed the hopes of a decent sport system evolving in these islands. The government saw sport as a tool to suppress people’s collective identity. You shall not be more popular than my island chief, the Katheeb!

The wards of Male’, represented by local football giants such as New Radiant (Henveiru ward), Victory (Ghalolhu ward) have barely survived this inhumane policy. Lagoons, representing the Machangoali ward disappeared after a brief bright spell in the early nineties. A club from Maafannu have not materialized for the past two decades while Vilingili , a satellite island 10 minutes boat ride from central Male' have emerged in the form of Vyansa. They are already in the Male' first division. There was, understandably no motivation! Huraa managed for a while with philanthropic backing of a nearby resort owned by the Sports Minister Deen.

The gross indecency of this rampant policy has not only suppressed the growth of sport. It has retarded the growth of sports. Killed players Spirits! Killed that sense of Fair Play! The result is an election with a mere 11 voting members from Male' clubs to decide the fate of Football in this country. This is a sentiment echoed, rather softly however, by the influential maldivesoccer website. http://maldivesoccer.net/v4/index.php?page=story&id=2050

A PLAN FOR THE FUTURE
We have change on our horizon. We must be ready. We must now look ahead. The FAM must plan for the future. We need to now get a few structural adjustments implemented immediately. I will therefore focus on three of these concepts that I feel need urgent attention.

The first one is at the grassroots level. That is the right of clubs to actively strengthen their collective football identity through an “empowering” competition format. Implementation of the Home and Away Rule will hopefully do the trick. The second is how to get this done? This can be done through the decentralization of football management to atoll based associations who shall manage their own atoll league. The national body will be responsible for a limited number of National Competitions and general policy. The third is what to do we do with all these roaming kids!

HOME AND AWAY RULE
The atolls will conduct an exciting home and away competition that will keep the island communities excited and entertained. No inhabited island in any atoll is further than three hours travel. Island representative teams will play a seasonal home and away league to select their Atoll Champion. We will witness a booming sport tourism industry with a significant increase in day and overnight trips to watch their teams play. If only there was a nationwide transport network to support this travel explosion! But for the time being, the fishermen footballers will handle this, thank you! Their passion for the game will produce a VIP football travel service in their fishing vessels. I have seen this in action! But only if you would leave people alone to do their own football!

I have witnessed island communities stage events requiring mind boggling logistics. Host islands have created an atmosphere of immense excitement and celebration for the whole community during competitions. The whole island chips in. They are proud to play host. Some of those World Cup hosts could learn a thing or two from our island administrators. You could get served lobster with first class service from top class local chefs and waiters home from their tourism jobs, on holiday for these celebrations. I have seen islands “broadcast” their commentary “live” through the old walkie-talkies from specially constructed towers! Just imagine what we will do with FM radio, our Wataniya 3-G mobiles and the Internet!

The present policy makers will scream gloom and doom at such a proposition. They will tell you that we will have “riot competitions” instead of football competitions. They do not have faith in the people's ability to do their football on their own steam. The old guards interpret life, fun and a bit of boisterousness as rioting! Police intervention in riot gear is their favorite solution. The new administrators will handle this structurally. They will devolve power to atoll associations. They will handle this through education, football rules and as a vibrant civil society organization that will eventually lobby for sport legislation in order to safeguard their sport! Football will then flourish in the atolls.

DECENTRALIZED ATOLL LEAGUES
The second concept is decentralization. Atoll associations will have the right to work on their own development plans within the wider framework outlined by the policy making national body’s Congress and Executive Committee. The atoll associations will be granted a budget and administrative staff with the required training. Club management will be streamlined. The law will be respected. Discipline will be maintained with well formulated regulation and systematic education. A little more carrot than stick! (Errr….we have been getting a lot more stick these days!) Football ground upgrading on feasible scale will hopefully materialize with proactive government and public/private partnerships. Islands will bid to host their atoll qualifying. Atolls will bid for hosting Zone qualifying rounds. Such latitude have unfortunately not been possible with the present exclusionary, autocratic, centralized, politically undisciplined, ideological structure of national governance.

Zonal and National Leagues will be managed by the central national association. One could imagine the first practical step towards this fancy idea as formulating a North, Central and Southern League. There could be two teams from the Central or Male' League to represent a third of the total population based there. The North and South will initially come up with one team each making a four (4) team Dhivehi League final round.

We may speculate that the national league may have a second team qualify from the North and South in the years to come. This will eventually increase the Premier Dhivehi League to a six (6) team home and away final round to select the National League Champion. Let’s hope Dhiraagu will be there with a bit more cash once we get better organized. Wataniya should not be discounted! We can surely attract businesses with a sense of corporate social responsibility to chip in. Who knows if our future Premier League could be sporting Dolphin Free Tuna!

The Northern League of four zone champions could in the initial years play a centralized league round say in the Haa Dhaalu Khulhudhufushu Zone Stadium while the South League can center in Seenu Hithadhoo Zone Stadium. We brought football to the people at the atoll level through the home and away Atoll League format. The zonal level will have to wait and be restricted to a central venue until the necessary transport infrastructure evolves.

I imagine the new equivalent of the Premier Dhivehi League will initially have four teams playing a 12 game home and away format where a savvy FAM President will convince either Island Aviation or one of the Air Taxi operators to chip in with the travel. It will be now possible to see, say, New Radiant and VB from the Central Male’ League play in Maglas Club’s home turf up North on the weekend and to see VB fight their brothers in Thinadhoo down South the same weekend. Imagine the crowds…..err, when we recover from this economic mess. We could manage to get going within the span of only a few years. Perhaps not a bad kick off for our journey towards that Little Brazil status we will so dare boast about in the years to come. The clubs need to see meaningful change to regain faith in the system.

AAAH…ALL THOSE KIDS!
So what about those kids? The new FAM will maintain that, it will be those kids who will eventually tip the balance in favor of our dream. The future of the Little Brazil brand! Our small island communities are teaming with kids looking for a recreational outlet. Traffic free streets offer a starting point for a most innovative youth development program. God forbid, if we ever develop a national transport network, and get a decent tax structure to finance our cultural security, we could keep our population in comfort in the island of their choice. We will thereby easily create the safest and most natural island environment that could build amazing ball skills. Asia will be jealous! How many Dhangadey’s will we produce?

If only we could scrap that 25% duty off sports goods. If only we could have convinced those fake pseudo-intellectual Doctors of Philosophy who scrapped what was left of the Male’ Inter school football competitions. It would have at least eased to some extent, the talent glut we will face in the years to come, essentially due to the absence of this school competition. I was impressed by a remark made by one of our senior national goalkeeper, Zariandhu. He observes that the FAM Youth Development program has nothing to do with talent identification or for that matter talent development. He saw the program as a physical activity session for a well to do overweight class of Male’ residents! What insight!

The inter school is a must. The question of the collective school identity comes up again. The old guards will claim that student pass rates have dropped since the Inter school started. They will then follow up with the argument parents are demanding the schools concentrate on study, not sports. Meanwhile parents are actually lining up for more sport opportunities for their children.

I have had the President’s office on my back with such garbage! I even had a past Tourism Minister claim that tourist resorts found it troublesome with so many staff seeking leave to go and play for their island teams during the Football season.

We had two options to combat the Tourism Ministers ramblings. One was to schedule the league during the off season (monsoons) when it was rainy and the seas were too rough for inter-island travel. The more attractive option would have been to “stuff” the Tourism Minister and seek the cooperation of resort management to become a partner in this massive national social development project! But aaaaagh…! Government Policy!

And now back to these school kids. The pass rates are shameful anyway. Anyone with a decent high school education in this day and age understands that it is not sport that plummets the pass rates. It is bad management, lack of accountability and so on. Someone, please sort those striking teachers' salaries! Do not allow such ignorant technocrat/pseudo-politicians to use sport as a scapegoat for the ills of their bad policies. The FAM should fight back. The association can convince parents that, if any, sport involvement improve pass rates. Sport is a discipline and it should be managed as such. Yes, you can play street football and have excellent discipline….like avoiding angry traffic! In fact you can average A- grades. Kids do not have to be nerds to be intelligent. There is abundant proof. They even say there are intelligent football players!

Schools need their Physical Education revamped in line with national sport achievement goals. Schools need expertise in sport management and administration. Believe you me those school principals love the limelight when their school teams win. And they deserve it too! This limelight however seems to be precisely the very reasons why the Education Ministry scrapped inter school competitions. Headmasters getting too popular! Eeeeeks…!

A WIN- WIN FOR FOOTBALL AND TOURISM
This is the icing on the cake! We have a vibrant tourism industry. The love affair the FAM can have with the tourism industry knows no bounds. Imagine a separate system of Inter-resort Beach Soccer that would attract world stars to our exclusively branded Maldives Beach Soccer Classic. How about hosting an AFC or a FIFA Congress occasionally? Surely, even President Blatter would love a little bit of peace and quiet from all those fights he has with the Premier League and the EU. How about a “Tropical Stadium” or a “Maldives Stadium” in Hulu-Male'. Why not say an exclusive "Island Stadium" that could host exclusive clubs? What? Did you say Manchester United?

Asia look-out! Little Brazil will roar! Candidates, this is your challenge!