The Bhutan Football Federation is the governing body of football in Bhutan, founded in 1983, and has been a member of FIFA since 2000 and the Asian Football Confederation since 1993. Bhutan play their home games at the national stadium, Changlimithang. It is one of the younger national teams in the world having played its first match in 1982. The team are currently one of the very weakest in the world and are, as of August 14 2014 ranked 46th and last in the Asian Football Confederation with zero points and 208th and joint last globally in the FIFA World Rankings with San Marino on zero points.Their highest ranking achieved was 187th, which they last reached in December 2008 following their semi-final performance in the 2008 SAFF Championship. From that high point, they slipped down the rankings to last place in December 2012 to join San Marino and the Turks and Caicos Islands in 207th. They have remained rooted to the bottom ever since, having lost all their competitive fixtures since then and fell to 208th place following the admission to FIFA of South Sudan in July 2014. The team are also ranked extremely low on the all time Elo ratings at 231st out of 234. The only FIFA affiliated nation below them are American Samoa, with the other two spots taken by the Northern Marianas Islands and Palau. The teams joint top scorers are Passang Tshering and Wangay Dorji both with five goals in twenty appearances. Bhutanese football has not developed as expected recently, most probably due to a lack of effort from the federation. After playing their first home international vs. Montserrat, known as The Other Final, back in 2002, followed by home matches vs. Guam and Mongolia in 2003 as part of the AFC Challenge Cup Qualifiers, Bhutan has missed three consecutive World Cup Qualifiers from 2006 to 2014, due to a self proclaimed 12 year-long ground renovation, hiding laziness and corruption in the federation as the real reason for such international shame. Next year the team is expected to take part in the 2018 World Cup Qualifiers. Futsal, which has started last year on an outdoor minifootball ground named Changjiji, and womens football without much care also, complete the poor leading skills of current BFF officials, mainly the secretary Ugyen Wangchuk and the not much involved president Ugyen Tsechup Dorji. Frustrations of bad attitude by Bhutanese footballers seem to be in vain, due to a kind of brain drain treatment the federation uses via some money, dinners, trophies and other symbolic corruptive ways to keep them quiet. Not surprisingly, when even so little means a lot for people who can barely earn enough for their living and their families, whereas worldwide footballers have the status of Gods, many of them at least. Lets just mention some spicy details of a close look inside BFFs stone age manipulative methods. This years double national futsal champions, Team Tertons, wont even take part in the upcoming AFC Futsal Club Championship in China, due to a lack of competitive skills by their manager Tshering Phuntsho, of course closely connected to the dark side of the federations activities. Furthermore, the national league was played during the World Cup, taking away even that satisfaction from players who couldnt enjoy the worlds best football skills. The Futsal championship mentioned before was held last December and again in June just ahead of the World Cup, without any competitive schedule after the first one, guess why, just because the big secretary Ugyen wanted it. Next , the ball used for the league is kind of stone aged without any good design, although BFF has a nice selection which were used for the last edition of the Kings Cup, a local international tournament which covered foreign eyes to the real conditions in football there. Together with opening new astro turf on Changlimithang, live league broadcasting, a visit of Sepp Blatter and a few similar tricks to make the poor quiet. It wasnt all so bad to be honest, but simply the mistakes are too big, too many and too hard to fix. A lot of them are done on purpose, that hurts the most. Archery as a national sport is also held in the Changlimithang stadium, recently there were cases of hitting ground with arrows during league matches, lets just hope nobody of the Bhutanese players will get hurt or be killed. Which, unfortunately, wouldnt be so surprising and hard to cover up with yet more dinners, boots, balls etc. Fixing is presented anywhere in the league, especially by some of the weakest and poorest teams who have no other options to survive. Thus the complete sports environment in Bhutan is corrupted and not developed enough. Leading national media services, BBS and Kuensel rather publish a quality article about it a few times a year, but not daily as should be, in their sport sections. The national basketball hall is used for multiple events such as Miss Bhutan, humanitarian actions, martial arts .... just not for futsal for which it would fit perfectly. The womens basketball team forbids the fans to follow them, just because it seems suspicious if somebody from abroad is interested into it, the whole media supply goes through one player named Namzay Kumutha, who decides who is allowed and who isnt to follow the team. A few national footballers are working as flight controllers, some as public servants, some are playing cricket, archery and other sports at the same kind of senior level. Only Passang Tshering and Yeshey Dorji can be named as real professionals, unfortunately Yeshey is thinking of retirement because of the lack of profit in football. The Government, Olympic Committee, currently in power Peoples Democratic Party and any national institution just dont care too much about these issues, or feel afraid of BFFS leaders too. Which for local residents might be true when you see the secretary Ugyen, a 100-200 kg mountain with a human head. All in all, we can sum up that what seems to be an ideal, peaceful, unique piece of heaven, as Bhutan is described through online travel agencies, in some aspects like sports is far away from the truth. Actually many international criminal organizations could have learned how it is done by BFF. Until then, the only hope is to wait for someone brave enough to put them off power and bring back the truth in descriptions of Bhutan we are finding all around. Done by: Steven Young
Posted on: Mon, 18 Aug 2014 17:07:22 +0000
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