Manilal: Tidying up soccer's ugly past

"WHEN the executive committee felt like a break, a member would go out to the balcony and shout (above the roar of the traffic) for the tea," said V. Manilal Fernando, Chairman of FFSL's Management Committee, i.e. when he's not presiding as chairman over a stable of high-profile companies or practicing law. "The Football Federation's headquarters then was two rented rooms above a thosai kade."

That was in 1980 when the Federation's chief was DIG Navaratnam, when Manilal Fernando was in his first year of soccer administration - and when the headquarters was situated at the Galle Road-end of W.A.Silva Mawatha in Wellawatte. Kitchen smoke

Fast forward to the present: The kitchen-smoke, curry-odour ambience of the '80s meetings are in a forgotten era as present-day officials confer in curtained air-conditioned rooms. Time for a tea break .? Press a button, and smiling waiters bring the beverage in trays of spotless-white porcelain cups and saucers - prepared in the Federation's modern cafeteria, which shares the ground floor with the players' dormitory and coaches' room.

Conference rooms and office space for a staff of 30 take up floor one. A 150-seater auditorium, the Board Room, the gymnasium and the Development office of FIFA sit on the second floor. And the stores and two coaches' apartments fill-up Floor 3.

Look out of almost any window of the FFSL's four-storied headquarters, near Independence Square, and you'll see coaches drive their subjects on a regulation-sized football pitch. The path between headquarters and pitch is a well-worn one as different squads at different times troop in and out between the two stations, morning through evening, and pretty much everyday. There's a buzz down there that suggests Sri Lanka soccer is on some urgent mission.



Ask Fernando why all this hurry-and-scurry, and you half-expect him to speak of preparations for some major event, and wonder if the event is the approaching Olympics, for which, unknown to all, Sri Lanka might've been secretly handed a wild card!

After all, the chummy-chummy relationship between Fernando and FIFA president Joseph Sepp Blatter is a well-publicised fact. Blatter, in fact, flew in, at Fernando's invitation, to snip the ribbon at the opening ceremony of the headquarters.

Fernando, though, is in no mood to explain away the 'hurry-n-scurry' frivolously: "Yes, there's urgency, but it has less to do with preparing for internationals and improving our ranking (160th in the world and 46th in Asia).

Rather, the urgency is about removing the virtual feudal framework within which the game has long resided and bring it into the world of professionalism. That is going to be a long journey. If we continue to work with the present sense of urgency, we'd get there, perhaps, 20-30 years down the road."


By any measure the FFSL headquarters' move from a thosai kade neighbourhood to, firstly, the grandstand of the old Race Course (in the late 80s during the presidency of A. R. Yaseen) and then to the plush four-storied building in the leafy, serene surroundings of Colombo 7 within 28 years represents progress - but a progress that becomes cosmetic before the mirror of on-field achievements.

The man himself agrees that the game's on-field advancement hasn't moved as rapidly as infrastructural development. "We were placed 160th or thereabouts in the world and between 24 and 46 in Asia even when we conducted business from above a thosai kade," admits Fernando - and adds, this situation is inevitable given that the character of the premier domestic tournament remains feudalistic yet.

"The premier clubs traditionally functioned on the patronage of individuals, invariably some wealthy mudalalis - it is pretty much the same yet. The needs of clubs now, however, are far more than it used to be.

You don't have the individuals with the sort of resources that can provide livelihood's essentials to the player so that he may give his all to the game. And thus, soccer's transition from (sh)amateurism to professionalism hasn't yet happened," says Fernando.


"So, the truth is: the administration maybe professional, but at the playing level, we are not. The goal is to get there, but there's some way to go. Until our premier clubs become fully professional outfits, it's unfair to expect our international ranking to leapfrog to the upper echelons - that's like expecting a Bajaj three-wheeler to win in Formula One racing."

The obvious way to quicken the transition to professionalism is to put up for sale the premier clubs, numbering a dozen. "Of course, the logical thing to do is to get companies to adopt clubs - and given football's huge global popularity, marketing premier division clubs ought not to be as difficult as it would for any other sport," says Fernando, "that is in theory; practically, it is a tough task."

He admits that task presently is made even tougher by the downturn in the country's economy. But even in more prosperous times, says he, the mercantile sector was averse to associating with soccer - and not because they sniff at the poor man's sport.

But then, historically, the reputation of soccer administration hasn't exactly been lilywhite. Factionalism is as old as the Federation itself; its history is not without cases of dissolution and litigations. The greatest shame inflicted on the game, in my book, was some time in the mid 60s, when the national team, managed by some of the game's senior officials, landed at the doors of the English FA in London - uninvited.


The team had competed in an Asian tournament in Israel and then made a brief tour of Germany, playing a 'friendly' or two - an itinerary that the team manager reckoned he could shamelessly foist on the English FA by landing on their doorstep. Of course, the Englishmen rejected the request; the world press publicised the unwelcome visit - and the country became to be known as the "gate crashers" of the world. The manager in question was banned from soccer administration for nearly life, but manoeuvred back into administration long before his sentence ran out - that's soccer administration for you.

Given that sort of history, Fernando confesses, obtaining corporate sponsorship for soccer clubs is a hard sell. "The game's image needs polishing up.

For that you need to take clubs out of its traditional environment, which is, let's face it, Maradana, Slave Island and Pettah, which is where the premier clubs have been situated from way back. The environmental change should be, if not physical, certainly mental, " says Fernando.

He, unlike past officials, however thinks the game's present environment isn't fait accompli.


His decision to sign a Rs.25 mn. deal with the CR&FC is intended to be soccer's first step in the direction to a new environment, as well as to attract a different sort of audience and overall, to give the game's image a facelift. "CR and any other present-day soccer venue are as different as Liberty cinema in Kollupitiya is from Elphinston in Maradana.

In Elphinston, puffing a fag with your legs cocked up on the seat in front is accepted - and unacceptable in Liberty; the audience around determines your conduct," says Fernando. "The classy Longden Place ambience will, I believe, help bring refinement to the soccer stands."

That apart, the native of Kalutara and past pupil of the town's Tissa MMV, is hopeful of a reincarnation of the rugby club's sporting past, when it engaged in competitive soccer. "That it is referred to Ceylonese Rugby Football Club is a misnomer - it is, as its initials, CR&FC, say: Ceylonese Rugby and Football Club." To change the CR's traditional image, however, is a long, tough task - but time is on Fernando's side.



The Rs.25 mn. deal, after all, runs for 20 years, allowing the SLFF use of CR's premises 185 days per year. "It's not only to add to our depleted list of venues that we tied up with a Colombo 7 rugby club - but, hopefully, to also help remake the game's image," said Fernando.

Amidst the many pictures on the walls of Fernando's office (including ones of him with past and present Brazilian legends Ronaldinho and Pele; and Blatter of course) is the group photograph of the Cricket Board committee in the year Sri Lanka won the World Cup.

He was a member of that Ana Punchihewa-led committee, and, one suspects he nurses a yearning for soccer to gain the same sort of popular and intimate public following cricket enjoys, post '96.

The realisation of that yearning is possible only through achievement, if not at the level of cricket's in 1996, at least in Asia. But just how far we lag behind was driven home last month: we weren't even finalists in the S. E. Asia Championships, despite home advantage.

Past's baggage, however, is too heavy for Fernando alone to bear. But that he has dared to drag the administration out from the bogs of inefficiency and self-interest and direct it on a healthier course is admirable - even though the final goal is something his administration or the succeeding ones will unlikely see. No matter. At least, present-day administrators, thankfully, don't have to shout for their tea.