The importance of being Earnest...
by Mohammad Hallal  18-02-2003

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It's not Oscar Wilde's Novel, but it is what we - Lebanese football fans - should be. We should be earnest about the fact that Lebanese football needs a great push to be rated as a first if not a second class football. People would think that with money we will be able to have professional footballers. No body can deny the importance of money in making any job
successful, but Lebanese football needs more than money. There is an important factor which goes hand in hand with money to make football better than it is now...If we all remember, football in the seventies was successful, although money wasn't available enough as it is the case now...The main reason for the prosperity of football at that period was the players' mentality.

Players at that time used to play great football because they were "mentally healthy" but players in nowadays has gone mad, seeking only money and saying goodbye for charming football. What we need is to change the clubs into institutions where every club should have a board of directors who control everything in it. One would say that turning clubs into institutions needs a lot of money, but the answer comes by making great companies own -if not half the club- some shares (stock) of the club. A striking example for this is, FIAT (the giant car company) owns the great Italian club Juventus and by this the club could have a steadfast capital stock. Another major thing is that clubs should have their own stadium (since Lebanon is small, you can say a playing field). It shouldn't be a team for every "Stadium", two clubs can share the same playing field as it is the case in Italy, where Torino
and Juventus shares Stadio Delli Alpi or where Internazionali and AC Milan shares The San Siro Stadium.
There is a good example about this here in Lebanon where Al-Ahed and Al-Mabara shares Al-Ahed's Football Field.
So this idea is easily fulfilled and then clubs can be a vital part of the game as the LFA says. Another helpful thing would be merchandising. What we see in Europe in this domain is quite amazing. Every club, whether a major club playing in the first division or a country side club has its own merchandising store, where you can find every thing related to the club from its T-Shirts, Caps, Key holder to Stickers, Posters and even Socks. Can anyone give me a club store called for example SAFA store or any sign that says "We Sale Ansar's T-Shirts" (Just as an example and No offense). You can only find them in Sports Stores and by that the club and the fans are the only losers, especially the club who could profit quite amazingly from these "Stores".

As for professionalism, it is quite hard (although it is not impossible) to have a professional atmosphere here in Lebanon, because we need the players to think in a professional way. This doesn't mean that they should not be dutiful to the club, but on the contrary, it means that they should strife to make their club the best simply because they would be looked at as they are the reason for the club's failure. Although What Olympic did was quite fantastic (because football here needed such a "shock"), but the missing link was that the club has chosen a group of "best players" putting in mind that money is enough to make them profitable team. I don't know whether players have full time contracts or part time ones. If it was the first then Olympic will become as it's officials said the best of the best, but if it
was the latter, then I think all the money is wasted and then the dream of having professional football in Lebanon is simply a dream, because all football players, officials, managers, media and fans should put one thing in their mind which is:

If there is no total devotion to football then there is No Professionalism.

In a nutshell, Lebanese football officials especially the LFA, should find the suitable solutions for a developing football atmosphere and then we could all wish that the Lebanese football would become at least a second class football, rather than the miserable situation we are in now. And this also stresses the importance of being earnest by crossing the T's and dotting the I's. That is, what do we need, a miserable football situations full of continuant failure or prosperous, professional, and a world class football.