Assuming that she becomes the chief of the Football Association of Thailand, there is nothing better to describe the immense task ahead for Nualphan Lamsam than a football jargon that says you are “as good as your last game”.
Worse still for her, that little statement must be multiplied by ten if it is Thai football.
If elected the FAT president in February, becoming the first woman ever to take that position, she will have to deal with one of the world’s most fickle fan bases.
Thai football supporters not only judge the FAT based on the last performance of the national team, they scream in unison for the executives’ heads until the next match tells them to do otherwise.
Watching football is fun, even for Nualphan, one of the country’s best-known businesswomen who is popularly called “Madam Pang”.
But she has been doing so without the whole country virtually on her back. Her involvement in Thai football has been at high levels, but it has always been the case of the buck stopping at the FAT president, not her.
Governments can blame bad domestic economies on global stocks or natural disasters elsewhere. Companies can cite red-ocean competitions for losses or shrinking profits and get away with it. Office workers can use deadline pressures as an excuse.
Football managers, however, cannot shake off responsibility, and in Thailand the FAT has born the blunt without fail.
It does not matter much if the national team has just gone to Japan and got a good result. If the team loses to Singapore a few days afterwards, the Japan achievement will have been all forgotten and the Singapore “disgrace” (no offence to the Singapore national team) will have been all people talk about.
Nualphan and her team of “Avengers” would face that, which is, to be fair, a surreal problem rather than a realistic one.
By that, poor results do not necessarily reflect poor management because they may only have to do with bad fortune.
In the football world, however, fans have the luxury of taking it out fully on the administrators. In various cases, to attribute a loss to Lady Luck is equivalent to throwing gasoline into a raging fire.
The Avengers will also be up against genuine, deep-rooted problems. Her team, which is strongly tipped to run the FAT after the February election, is expected to plough through traditional obstacles blocking Thai football progress, mainly polarised rivalry of the sport’s most power groups.
That is because she has managed to bring the rivals’ key personalities into her proposed management.
The club-or-country problem occurs everywhere, but is arguably the most serious in Thailand. Thai Premier League clubs have withheld Thai players from national duties for fun using all kinds of tactics, from fake “injuries” to just saying No.
This has led to several questionable results. The national team, for example, has lost what had been supposed to be easy friendlies because the players were prevented from training sufficiently together.
This has frustrated the fickle fan base and this time nobody could blame them. And while clubs were frowned upon, much of the anger was directed at the FAT.
Many look at Madam Pang’s team and see hope. Most clubs big and small support her, significantly the “superpowers”, Buriram United and Muangthong United.
Both Buriram United and Muangthong United and other top clubs even have senior representatives in her team. This, her cheerleaders say, will make her a great mediator who can persuade clubs to serve national interests more.
She is said to have been guaranteed more than 10 votes and needs about 25 more to secure a victory, a very good situation to be in. Some 75 representatives of the Thai League will be the voters.
On the day she applied for the presidency last week, some 60 clubs endorsed her registration.
A recent opinion poll is clear on the priorities of the new president. Thai people want to see a remarkable progress of the national team.
The poll shows her at the top of popularity table, with nearly 40% support, followed by her direct FAT presidency competitor Pauline Ngampring, one of the most famous transgender politicians who is widely respected for knowledge of, and involvement in, Thai football, at more than 21%.
File photo : Pauline Ngampring
Both Madam Pang and Pauline are considered a breath of fresh air. One possible positive is that while the FAT presidency was often associated with personal glories or vested interests that could go as high as world governance of football, they both seem to be genuinely in love with football.
This is an unmeasurable quality but, a lot of people believe, could be all that Thai football needs.
If Madam Pang wins the election, the romanticization or honeymoon can end quickly. The world’s most popular sport is also the most complex. The best and worst of humans have been playing out against each other in football, and her viewing position will change _ from the front row to the centre stage.
“Believe me” is her successful business slogan plastered as far as the eye can see. But it is for other products which are easier to promote, defend or whitewash. Now that she can be at the epicenter of Thai football, with its long-term problems, mammoth or silly, the catchphrase could face an acid test.
By Tulsathit Taptim
