When this blog was in its zenith many years ago, a lot of information on transfers and behind the scenes news came from one person whom I would often watch games with or bump into at Muangthong matches. That person was Matt Riley and now, long after leaving the Big Mango and returning to Blighty, he’s released a fantastic book looking back on the surreal experience of Thai football or as he more poetically tags it, “a beautiful madness”.
Let’s be clear: if you’re looking for a match-by-match, stat-by-stat, fluid report of the action from a team sweating it out in the minnow leagues that make up ASEAN, this is not the book for you. Don’t feel bad though, it was an assumption I myself made as I perused the opening chapters of the book. Matt had been good enough to ask me for feedback and I made an early note that his timeline seemed somewhat jumbled in the opening chapters before realizing it wasn’t by error so much as by irrelevance.
That's because in capturing the “madness”, author Matt has used football as a microcosm of expatriate life in Thailand, primarily through reciting a collection of flashbulb memories of his incredible experiences. He doesn’t implicitly state this however, and I can only recall one moment where he actually stops to explain a specific aspect of the local culture, known as “greng-jai”. Perhaps he feels it’s self-evident or perhaps he wants to let his experiences in football simply speak for themselves.
Fortunately, as we might expect from a head of English at a prestigious international school, Matt is better equipped than the average punter to elucidate a sequence of moments that sometimes read like something out of a David Lynch movie. The experiences themselves are not embellished though, in many cases I can vouch for them first hand. The most striking (in more ways than one) memory recited by Matthew in the book is of the moment that the Charity Shield game between Muangthong and Thai Port FC was abandoned as riots started in the crowd. Like Matt, I had to run out of the stadium and across one of the most touristed areas of Bangkok to escape an ass-kicking. Was that the end of the saga? Far from it. The match was replayed in Bangkok at the peak of the political upheaval and fighting across Bangkok. Days after public transport in the city was suspended, fans had to make their way back to the stadium to see Muangthong and Thai Port play “behind closed doors”. When Thai Port scored, a section of the crowd dressed in neutral colours cheered. I remember saying to Matt “I’m not running again”. Luckily, we didn’t have to and the game passed peacefully. The animosity from those days is the reason why games between these two teams still exclude away fans to this day.
Other memories are even more dreamlike, including tigers in cages, (alleged) assassin referees, team managers calling Matt to ask him when the game starts, Godfathers, astronauts, exploding shoes and more. Matt remains humble - the exploding shoe story will confirm this - and doesn’t try to draw conclusions, moral teachings or anything else more than a truly remarkable set of encounters.
Those who are familiar with Thai football or simply “falang” (foreigners in Thailand) will crack a knowing smile of understanding at many of the cultural concepts - some enjoyable, some less so - that are covered in the pages of “Madness” while those who are not may find them even harder to comprehend, but no less gripping. Although the book is certainly not designed as a guide to Thai culture or sports, it still paints a picture of both.
I should note that there are some experiences I recall differently to Matt. That’s only to be expected. There are also some people, motivations and viewpoints I saw, and continue to see, differently to him but hey, it’s football. It’s people. It’s Thailand.
In summary, Thai Football Tales is the book I would write if I had a slightly sharper literary knife. It serves as an extended look at Thailand and Thai football from the eyes of one person who has since returned home and can at least try to make sense of it all. It’s a short, entertaining and enjoyable read at an equally enjoyable price.
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