- Video
-
Club Roar
Captured a great grassroots sporting moment? We want to see it!Content Collections
The Roar Community
- Join
- Login
The World Cup trophy is pictured in front of a FIFA logo prior to the 2010 World Cup in South Africa. AP Photo/Keystone, Patrick B. Kraemer.
For many countries the World Cup starts in June 2014, but for 15,000 cheering supporters on the concrete seats of Phnom Penh’s Olympic Stadium, it started last week.
Most people assume that the World Cup is one month every four years. These are the finals, and represent the culmination of three years of international sparring across the globe.
For a vast majority of nations, the World Cup begins and ends in the qualifiers.
Yet this does little to dampen their enthusiasm to see just how far they can go, and who they can upset in the process.
For Cambodia, a country whose sporting infrastructure suffered with the rest of the country through decades of civil conflict and a horrible four years of genocide, football has proved something of a challenge.
Whilst the game is played in dusty villages from the great temples of Siem Reap to the beaches of Sihanoukville with balls fashioned from split bamboo, the chance to play any structured form of the game, even at amateur level, is extremely limited.
Despite this a basic league has been running for some years and from the efforts of a few key individuals, talent has been found. The result is a national football team that is prepared to give it a go.
So 2:30pm Wednesday last week people started making excuses at offices around the capital. They had “meetings to attend”, “children who were sick,” or for the more candid, “football to watch.” Having used all my excuses in the past, I opted for the latter.
Entry to the game was USD1 if you wanted the plum seats in the covered stand or USD0.25 if you wished to chance the rainy season weather.
The crowd was stunned into silence early on though as 19-year-old Lao midfielder Phomsouvanh fired a free-kick past the flatfooted Cambodian keeper Ouk Mich (see video below), a feat he was to repeat in the second half. It was a strike more worthy of Europe than the crumbling facade of Olympic Stadium and had us scrambling for the sole team sheet one of the media contingent had on hand to work out who this deadball wonder was.
But the Cambodians showed that even if you were brought up playing with a bamboo ball, you can still play football.
They pushed the ball well through the middle, cutting wide to make the most of their pace. The Lao had little answer to the technique and pace of Kouch Sokumpheak who managed a beautiful first goal and a lovely cut-back assist for the second to hand Sam El Nasa the first of his two goals.
In the end the Cambodians won 4-2, through a better use of the flanks and a better ability for their midfield to defend higher up the park. It was a good effort from a team that is traditionally short on technique and shorter on tactical nous.
It wasn’t Brazil versus Germany, but sitting amongst the partisan crowd made you believe that it could be.
The return leg in Vientiane was a mirror of the first, with the Cambodians eventually losing 6-2 in extra time to a Lao side bouyed by a resurgent Lamnao Singto.
For the Cambodians it was a disappointing end to a campaign that started so brightly, yet one from which the Cambodians will learn lessons.
For the Lao, they now face the daunting task of overcoming China in the second round.
It is probably a task too great, and most of the world will neither notice nor care. But for the people of a small, impoverished SE Asian nation, the next four weeks offers the opportunity to dream.
And that, surely, is what the World Cup is all about.
Are you the ultimate team manager? Pick your own superstar team and go head to head with other football fans for glory and cash prizes on Draftstars. Imagine what you could be buying instead. Set a deposit limit.