You experience everything in Thailand (49)

Discrimination and racism are two hot topics in the world news. Blog reader and especially blog writer Hans Pronk talks about how he thinks this is handled in his football world in Ubon Ratchathani.

He plays there in the Ubon Champions League, which is not quite comparable to the European Champions League. No Messi, Ronaldo or Frankie, but regular, mostly older players. Hans has already made a nice story about playing football in Ubon, which you can read at www.thailandblog.nl/leven-thailand/amateurfootball-in-thailand

This is the story of Hans Pronk

No discrimination in football in Ubon

Thailand is still (a bit) a class society and people who are high on the social ladder are often treated differently from the common people. Farangs are also treated differently than the normal Thai, sometimes in a negative but more often in a positive way, at least that is my experience. I will give some examples of what I experience on the football fields, but of course no far-reaching conclusions can be drawn from that.

Also in Thailand, football is not an elite sport and anyone who can play football a bit can find a team to play in, because, for example, no membership fee is charged. Of course you must be able to buy football boots and have transport, because the football complex where the competition (the Ubon Champions League) takes place is located outside the city in an area where few people live and public transport is not available. As a result, the majority of the players are probably well above the minimum wage, but we also have players who are just above the minimum wage. However, we do not have rice farmers – who form the majority in the province of Ubon – in our team and they also seem to be absent in other teams. The hard life may have made it physically almost impossible to play football at the age of 50. By the way, you never see them on a racing bike, while at the weekend you see quite a few groups of cyclists riding through the province. So it does not seem to be discrimination against the farmers, but rather the result of a combination of a lack of money and premature wear and tear of the body.

A new player came to our team last year, who turned out to be a bank manager. He seems to own several cars and recently he even showed up with a Mercedes. Admittedly not the latest model, but still. On the first game the bank manager played, the umpire recognized him and came straight up to him, made a wai and a deep bow, his head almost touching the turf. In our eyes, of course, a somewhat exaggerated greeting and I must even say that I have never seen it in that extreme form before. Incidentally, it seems that this form hardly occurs among the young people in Thailand anymore, so it must have had its day.

The same referee always comes to me - even if he has to blow his whistle on another field - but only to shake my hand. As a farang I apparently also have an advantage.

In our team, the bank manager has no advantage and he suffers resignedly. For example, he has a few kilos too many and is therefore slow and, moreover, he smokes, which is clearly noticeable in his condition. So he gets few playing minutes, even less than me, while I am almost 20 years older.

In the beginning he took a folding chair with him to enjoy a beer after the game on the edge of the field, together with his fellow footballers. But that chair kept being occupied by other beer drinkers as soon as he got up, so that he had to stand or sit in the grass. He was also resigned to that, although he left that chair at home in the fourth game he played. No respect for the bank manager, that is clear.

So little positive discrimination on the football fields and negative discrimination against women, for example, is also a thing of the past. For example, there is a female referee, less than thirty years old, who effortlessly controls 22 elderly men with her whistle. No protests.

Finally, an example of how a farang – my person – is treated by the public on the football fields: at a tournament that coincided with a village festival, resulting in quite a large audience, I received a warm round of applause at a substitution. I didn't hear any applause for the rest of the day, for anyone.

However, not every farang is treated this way on the football fields. A few years ago, for example, a Finn played in another team, but he hardly got around to playing, while that was probably not due to a lack of football qualities, but more because of his big mouth. The following year he played for another team, but he almost didn't get a job there either. In the following years I never saw him again and since then I have been the only farang on the soccer fields in Ubon.