Liverpool in Malaysia

I am writing from Kuala Lumpur Malaysia. I have just watched Liverpool play Chelsea live on television. It is incredible to see the support that the English Premiership has out here. All of my male, Sri Lankan Tamil cousins have a favourite team. Most of them support Man United though the more discerning ofcourse follow Liverpool. My cousin Mohan even supports Fulham! Replica shirts are worn proudly, everyone I know out here has access to liver premiership matches – happily staying up till 1am to catch the action and the national newspapers have backpages devoted to yesterday’s english soccer action. Footballing legend John Barnes was in town this weekend as well. Rumour has it that match fixing has been going on and a Chinese Malaysian syndicate is behind it. It was an exciting weekend as Manchester United were beaten by Manchester City (owned by the former primeminister of Thailand).

So not only are the “english” football clubs multinational a large extent of the support base is also multinational.

What are the consequences?

- well ofcourse enourmous amounts of money – the television rights for the premiership was over 2 billion pounds this year alone. Player receive more a week in salaries than many of us would for four years work! Steven Gerard gets paid 100 000 (GBP) a week and brilliant though he is – this is not value for money. In fact the money we pay these stars demonstrates what we do value in our society.

the downgrading of local sport – the premiership dominates the sports pages here in Malaysia. But local sport receives a small proportion of the coverage.

Often globalisation means westernisation – more people having access to western products and services. Despite “The world is flat” by Thomas L Friedman. There is a definite slant in favour of the west in the global cultural economy.

Watching the premiership in Malaysia reminded me of the problem of Multicultural church. People often liken church to a football match – 22 people working like crazy while the majority spectate. But unfortunately the premiership offers a model of how “international” churches are often run – you have a western staff team performing western church services to a multinational audience.