Pele, the King of Football

 

Pele, the King of football has passed away at the age of 82. The world mourns the loss of the undisputed king of football or soccer if you are an Amrikan. Before, Messi, we had Maradona and before him, we had Pele but the 'Black Pearl' continues to overshadow every other football player who have played this game on Earth. 

Elon Musk might start a football league in Mars in 2040 but until then, Pele was and will always be the greatest player in our galaxy.

Every generation has football greats and we cannot and should not compare one with the other. The world has witnessed great players such as Just Fontaine, Eusebio, Johan Cruyff, Michel Platini and many more. The new generation knows Beckham, Zidane, Ronaldo from Brazil, Ronaldo from Portugal, Messi and many more. But Pele was different. 

Pele was known all around the world when most of the developing countries didn't even have a TV channel or the population didn't even own any television sets. And there was no live news. Folks got their news from newspapers in so-called third world countries but everyone knew Pele. The closest anyone had come to greatness was Maradona and now Messi will also be known forever like these two football Gods.

Pele was the only player and will most likely be the only player to lift the World Cup three times. He almost averaged a goal per game in his football career. Everybody wanted to be Pele until Maradona came along almost two decades later. 

The young generation then wanted to be Maradona until Messi came along almost two decades later. Mbappe could  possibly win another World Cup but it will be very difficult to match Pele's record of winning it three times. Mbappe has already matched Pele's goal record of 12 goals at the World Cup and don't be surprised if he becomes the highest goal scorer beating Miroslav Klose's record of 16 goals, come 2026!

Brazil has always played football like they do the samba. It's beautiful and always fun to watch. As a kid, I still remember Zico, Socrates in the 80s. Romario in the 90s, Ronaldo and Kaka after that and many more. 

How can Nepal qualify for the World Cup? We will never accomplish that feat as long as we have our incompetent government focusing more on milking funds from sports organizations and making it a place to employ their cadres. Our football association and nearly all other sports organizations have corrupt officials who only want the positions to make some dough. 

Ganesh Thapa made hundreds of crores while he was heading ANFA, our own football association. ANFA now has a budget in hundreds of crores per year and they still can't operate a national league on time. 

Our young, talented footballers either leave our land to work in foreign lands or the most they can achieve is to play in other football leagues in India or other Asian countries. If you do a background check on most of the officials at our sports organizations, then you won't be surprised to find out that most of them are or were either mundrey gundas or politicians or mundrey gundas who later became thulo netas. 

Let's get back to football. Pele was 5'8 tall. Messi is 5'7 and Maradona was only five feet and five inches. So, we really don't have to be lanky like the Germans and the Dutch to play a beautiful game. We have had and we still do have talented football players. They just don't receive the incentives to play the game without worrying about their future. 

ANFA could have done a lot with its youth academy but so far it has failed miserably to make lives of our footballers better. Messi was 13 when Barcelona offered him the opportunity to join their youth academy but he had been showing great talent before he reached the first grade. If we really want to qualify for the World Cup then ANFA should started at the primary level and nurture the talented youngsters for a decade and hopefully they can do wonders.

First, let us focus on becoming the unbeatable SAF champions for a decade and then another decade to rule Asia and maybe the world. Our football players get peanuts and have no income after their football career is over. Our banks and byaparis make billions of dollars in profit and so far, none of our football players can retire comfortably. Our government, be it our federal or provincial, have no real concrete plans to provide them jobs like they do across the border.

We might look at China and India and say, well, these two big giants can't do sheet in the football world and how can we do anything better? It's not about how big your country is or how rich your government is... it's all about passion and policies to develop the love for the game at the grassroot level. 

Uruguay has barely three and half  million folks and they seem to be doing pretty well! Well, they won twice back in the 30s and 50s!

We can even learn a thing or two from Iceland where less than 3 lakhs folks live. What did Iceland do right?  Well, twenty years ago, the government invested heavily in youth football by forming a well-oiled club system and pouring tons of dough to built great facilities and providing professional training to coaches from the junior level to the professional level.ANFA can do it but we can't be always dependent on FIFA for additional funds. 

Our government must invest from the grassroots level to the top not only in football but all sports. Unless, we invest more in sports and arts, we will not really move ahead. 

And we only talk about men's football but we tend to forget that our women's national team is very good and could qualify for the World Cup in the next ten years if we invest in them. The women's team have a better odds of playing at the global stage then our men's. 

Maybe, we should all get together and create a fund and an organization to develop young female players from the age of 10. Who knows, in a decade, our women footballers will be known all around the world for their skills. 

Same goes for the men too but we all know that our Sports Ministry gets peanuts and our government officials steal the dough for their own benefit instead of helping our athletes. That's the way it is. Maybe, it's time for changes like Swami Tupac Shakur used to tell us in his sermons back in the days.

For complaints, send me an email at  maguffadi@gmail.com 

Image source: CNN

Prachanda 3.0

 

Prachanda, our former warrior turned emperor turned magician is now in his final attempt to make some more moolah for his mohalla. If you want to be a lawmaker in this great land of ours, you have three options. One, is to join a political party and become a loyal cadre, slog it out for decades and finally get the ticket to stand up for election and win the god damn thing and hopefully get to be a mantri and make some money. 

The second option is to be a contractor or a byapari, just give your illegal money (from fake VAT bills or tax evasion or everything not legal) to a political party. Either the party gives you a ticket for the election or will make you a MP from their PR seat. The PR route is easier. Just ask our byaparis and even a former chairman of another political party who gave more than 10 crores to Oli Baba to get a PR seat from the United Mundrey Leaders.

The third option is to be a social activist or a person who rants a lot who opens a new political party and wins seats in the election and gets to be a mantri. The grumpy old men have shown us that these old buffoons still have some muscles (due to lot of money stashed in their backyard or the Cayman Islands). Look at Deuba, Oli, Makune and other old fogies who managed to win from their ilaka again. 

We have new political kids in town, the Rastriya Swatantra Party (RSP), Janamat Party and the Nagrik Unmukti Party. Whatever happened to our Sajha and Bibeksheel wallahs?  Rabindra Mishra is now a big man in the RPP. Good luck to him and no thanks for wasting our time, opening a new party and then leaving to join the right-wing wallahs. If RSP, JP and NUP band together, then they could run the government without the help of others come 2027!

Well, let's get back to Prachanda, our savior who has now taken the chill pill and seem to have a change of heart when it comes to everything. The Maobaddies started out as teacher-killing, temple-bashing communist warriors. They looted banks and extorted money not only from our chor byaparis and high level government officials but also local school teachers, NGO staff and anybody who seem to have a few wads of cash. 

We heard about folks forced to chew playing cards, getting flogged and made to do hard labor for marrying more than once. Thank God, they didn't punish the drunkyards in the villages by forcing them to drink a whole vat of local jaad!

Well, the so-called People's War from 1996 to 2006 destroyed our so-called economy but folks in Kathmandu Valley should thank the Maoists for the real estate market. Your 6 anna land would not be worth 30 lakhs but is today worth 3 crores due to Prachanda and his gang. So, we all need to thank Prachanda for making us rich and making us sell our land and drive around in expensive vehicles and enjoying Thakali thalis.

Our poor government now has to pay billions more to security personnel. We didn't have the Armed Police Force then. Our Nepal Army was half the size it is today. It's about time our incompetent government downsize our security forces and save us some money. We are not invading India anytime soon and we won't be attacked by China unless we offer Nepali Citizenship to His Holiness. 

Our Armed Police Force should protect our borders. Our Army wallahs should be made a permanent rapid reaction force for the UN and maybe we will also get a permanent seat at the UN Security Council as well. Well, we can build our own home-made nuclear reactor and get some nukes. 

After all, we are surrounded by Nukist countries. The Chineses, the Desis, The Pakistanis. Maybe, rest of the SAARC countries should get a nuke or two as well. We all can display it in our international airports so all foreign tourists can take a selfie or two.

Well, let's come back to Prachanda again. The first version of his Prime Monstership was more like that of a juvenile delinquent. The second stint was more like a confused young adult. Now, we hope he will finally act like a consenting adult. 

Prachanda will switch sides faster than you can cook your Current chow chow. He is like a snake charmer. But this time, he has finally come back home. He is no longer the confused communist. 

He doesn't hate temples, teachers or even the daura suruwal! He even consults an astrologer to figure out the right time to move into Baluwatar. Don't be surprised if he joins the RPP in the next election and becomes our President. He is a magician. He will use every tricks in his magic book to be in power. 

In a year or two, the current coalition will fail again. Oli will become our Prime Monster if he is still alive. Let's pray for his good health. We need a national comedian for a few more years. 

Let us wish Prachanda well , the man who will now not waste taxpayers money on expensive stuff but will sleep on the floor instead of a bed worth lakhs, eat only one saadha meal per day and will quit drinking Blue Label and become a Vegan as he enters the Baluwatar Palace for the third time. 

And talking about standing up for elections, let's guess where Prachanda will fight for election next time around. He has been to Kirtipur, Siraha, Chitwan and now Gorkha. Hope it will be Rukum or Rolpa next time hai! 

Deuba will wait while he drinks his whiskey. He is a a patient man. His astrologer is always right. He will once again become our PM. Until then, let us enjoy the show. Who needs Netflix? Our political drama is better than them Korean ones!

For complaints, send me an email at  maguffadi@gmail.com