Reportage – 2004

Tibetans play for pride in football tournament in exile

DHARAMSHALA, India, 8 June 2004 (AFP)

They have little hope of FIFA recognition and play in conditions their European idols would barely recognise, but for exiled Tibetan footballers competing here their annual tournament is a matter of "national" pride.

Eight teams, including Bir United, named after a settlement in north India, and the Southern Stars, refugees from camps in south India, are playing a week of matches that will determine the best football club in Tibet's diaspora.

The Tibetan National Sports Association has no regular funding other than donations and its coaches are volunteers. But for Tibetans living in exile from Chinese rule, the tournament is about more than sports.

"It's an opportunity for Tibetans to get exposure. I feel proud to be playing in my country's name," said Bir United captain Kalsang Dorjee, a fan of Dutch player Ruud van Nistelrooy.

His upbeat mood came even though his club was trounced 4-1 by a team of Kathmandu-based Tibetans captained by Karma Yeshi, an admirer of France's Zinedine Zidane.

Thousands of Tibetans, largely young people, sat through the rain on stone steps as the tournament opened Saturday at the Tibetan Children's Village School grounds in Dharamsala, the north Indian base of Tibet's spiritual leader the Dalai Lama.

The tournament was launched in 1982 and named in honour of the Dalai Lama's late mother Dickey Tsering, who had died a year earlier and was known to Tibetans as Gyalyum Chemo, or "the great mother."

"Sports have become a means for achieving political gains and establishing friendly ties," Tibet's prime minister-in-exile Samdhong Rinpoche said as he inaugurated the games.

"For the exiled Tibetans, sports would be a medium to establish international relations, make political declarations and to exhibit the skills and aspirations of the Tibetan people," he said.

The Tibetan footballers' biggest foray into politics came in 2001 in Denmark where supporters, ignoring protests by China, organised a match between Tibet and the national team of Greenland.

Neither the Tibetan or Greenland team enjoys recognition by FIFA, football's world governing body.

Football came to Tibet in 1904 when Britain, worried about Russian inroads in central Asia, invaded the isolated Buddhist territory and set up a mission in the "Forbidden City" Lhasa.

Tibetans, whose main sport until then was horse racing, gradually acquired a love for the pastime of the resident British and the Indian troops who accompanied them.

The sport did not come without concerns. Lobsang Tenzin, a septuagenarian who now tends the Dalai Lama's garden in Dharamsala, recalled Buddhist monks once trying to stop a game, worrying that the "Buddha's head" was being kicked.

Thupten Choephel, who played in Lhasa against Chinese footballers, remembered that he occasionally wished ill upon his sporting rivals.

"When the proper way doesn't work, one will try to hurt the good players of your opponents," he said.

But he said that after matches he regretted any foul play with the Chinese.

"Such intentions are anti-sports spirit. The game should be played with a spirit of a good sportsmanship," he said.

Kalsang Dhondup, a chief organiser of the tournament here, said the Tibetans had no more matches set against national teams, but "wherever we get the invitation and opportunity, we will play."

He said the Tibetan footballers were learning to cope with their financial restraints, but that another concern had emerged & how to handle large groups of cheering fans.

While Tibetans are yet to produce football hooligans, he said organisers felt "the crowd gets a little overexcited sometimes, which is a bit of a problem."