Shafin Sikder

New York City College of Technology, CUNY

03 March 2022

              The ugly truth behind soccer clubs

In the modern day and age competitiveness exists pretty much anywhere you can possibly look, there’s someone who is trying to do something better than the next person and sometimes that person can bring down other people in hopes of achieving something that feels great to them and something that makes them whole in a sense. This exact scenario exists in my sports club around the world that takes the sport they play seriously, there’s nothing wrong with being competitive in fact without being competitive you can’t really progress further and be the best version of yourself however if that competitiveness starts to affect people around you in a negative way then we have a serious problem since many of the people play the sport in order to have a good time and enjoy the sport but if there’s someone who makes them feel extremely bad about themselves for not being able to live up to someone else’s expectations then that person becomes a hindrance to the clubs overall values and basically the player experience. This is my outcry to the people of power in sports clubs to bring about change to better their player experience. If not then what is the point of playing the sport?.

The soccer club that I am currently part of is comprised of bengali people only since the leagues and tournaments we play only allow bengali people and most of the days when we have practice sessions we all give our 100% in the practice and generally have a laugh together but there are days where one of the players mess up and just because of that they get critiqued by certain players so harshly that the player no longer wants to play for the team or the player just doesn’t enjoy playing anymore due to the fact that some people just don’t know how to give critics and not blatantly bash someone down. For a long time my thoughts were that I was the only one who was feeling this type of way in my club but after asking some of my friends the same questions that ponders my mind, one of my friend who wants to be anonymous said “ Bro I agree with what you said there is a specific individual in the club who has a big mouth and talks down on a lot of people including me and I want to ask the management to talk to that player but I can’t cuz that specific individual is close with management and if I say anything I might be facing retaliation and I just don’t want to have to go through that “. This quote from that specific individual goes to show how it’s just not me and it’s a much deeper issue that stems from a lot of semi professional clubs which needs to be dealt with.