Is Dhivehi football living on borrowed time?

Deserted: of course now but on match days too

This is not something any of us would have predicted in our dreams but the harsh reality is we are living that moment for quite some time now. 

Football has been played to virtually empty stadium for the last five years and there is real fear football is losing it appeal and soon Galolhu stadium will pull down its shutter.

It hit a nadir last year when VB Addu FC with the expensively brought players dominated on all fronts while remaining teams were playing catch up.  Even the biggest of rivals, Victory and New Radiant could attract less than three thousand when in the 80s and 90s it was always more than seven or eight thousands. 

On match day now Galholhu stadium wears a deserted look. You see less then thousand supporters scattered here and there. Barely hear a sound from inside. It seems a funeral procession is underway. From outside it resemble a haunted castle, an edifice that has been orphaned and left to decay. 

Did we ever foresee this? That football, once such obsessively followed sport, now close ‘on the verge of extinction?’ That it makes no impression on usual football-lovers? Where did it all go wrong? 

Was this part and parcel of modernization and social change Maldives have undergone through that we have no time for diversion of this sort? Or did something more dramatic happen that we are unaware of? Or was it due to the political instability that the country had to experience for too long that is having the negative impact on it?

Whatever it is, something inherently wrong is going on noticed or otherwise,  apart from the usual suspects like 1) clubs taking part in the league are not competitive enough, 2) one or two teams having full bulk of national team players, or 3) when famous clubs like Victory or New Radiant are not performing well etc.

Though New Radiant has finally done something to arrest the damage Galholhu stadium doesn’t not look its old self. Their opening up of purse string and bringing in some good players may have helped them to fill in with more of their supporter but the real buzz of excitement is strangely missing. May be it will take time. Or may be you can never give Dhivehi football a clean bill of health, not again with our ‘Siyaasee’ gene in hyperactive mode.