Friday, December 31, 2010
Improve The Pitch
For all the Liga Primer Indonesia's promises of world class management and salaries paid on time no one seems to have said anything about pitches. For good reason I guess, most stadiums are owned by local government and their attitude is to spend as little as possible on their upkeep.
I saw one guy watering the pitch at Lebuk Bulus last week and he was watering the playing surface with a watering can! The whole pitch! And this for a stadium that was used as a training ground during the AFF Cup recently.
Now, with all these foreign coaches coming in, to both the ISL and the LPI, criticisms are mounting about the sub standard playing surfaces. National team coach Alfred Riedl recently approached the Indonesian President saying the players needed an all weather training surface, not the pot holed effort they currently used.
New Medan Bintang coach Michael Feichtenbeiner has joined the chorus, complaining about the facilities in Medan.
He's got good reason to whine as it looks like four teams could be using the same surface; PSMS, Pro Titan (both Divisi Utama), Medan Bintang and Medan Chiefs (both LPI).
That's the problem with employing foreign coaches. They're a whiney bunch who want things done their way or it's highway. But is anyone listening? Who, out there, is going to fund pitch improvements?
UPDATE - that'll learn me! Feichtenbeiner is apparently with Makassar City which makes the whole paragraph Crap! To an extent. A list of coaches with LPI teams can be found here.
# posted by Me @ 4:48 PM 
