An Inspiring Story

No matter how serious the challenges you face, your dreams can become real if you put your mind to it.

With the 2014 FIFA World Cup currently in full swing, it seems appropriate to share a true story of a footballing nature, that proves this point.

Inspired by the FIFA World Cup held in Mexico in 1986, a group of young boys with a dream of being champions, initiated the humble beginnings of Panyee FC.

Logic dictates that Panyee football club, given its location, should never exist – and yet it is now regarded as one of southern Thailand’s best.

The story (which was relayed in an advert for TMB Bank in 2011) is told here by one of the boys.

An inspiring story – Panyee Football Club

To tell the story of our football team we need to go back to the very beginning.

On our island (Koh Panyee in Thailand) we loved to watch football but no one had actually ever played it.

You see, we live on a small floating village (built on stilts). And space can be hard to find.

The only sports played here are boat racing … and telling tales about the size of fish you caught.

One day, one of the boys had an idea. He suggested we form a team of our own.

When the other villagers heard our plan they thought it was ridiculous.

One man shouted at us: “What are you noisy kids doing? You are scaring all the fish away!”

We replied “We’re starting a football team. We’re going to be world champions.”

He laughed: “Look around you. Look where you live.”

We realised he was right. We had nowhere to play or even practise. We had ourselves a football team but we didn’t have a pitch.

This was a real problem because where we live space wasn’t something we had.

We figured we’d have to create our own space.

We started by collecting some old wood from around the village … tying some old fishing rafts together … and working after school to finish the floating playing surface.

After a lot of work we had our own pitch to play on.

It was shaky, uneven and had nails sticking out everywhere. The ball went into the water often … and so did we.

So we had to learn to play on a wet, slippery surface.

The pitch was also small so our footwork got really good.

One day a villager, laughing his heart out, shouted out at us “You won’t become champions on that thing!”

Then one morning, one of the guys came with a flyer from the mainland. It was promoting a one day tournament, the Pangha Cup.

Should we enter? We weren’t sure. We didn’t know if we were good enough to enter.

We made the decision to play anyway.

Then one day a villager appeared on the jetty where we were meeting.

“You don’t look like champions in those clothes,” he said before hauling a wicker basket out of his boat.

“You’ll look better in these!”

We didn’t realise the rest of the village had been watching us practise and had pitched in to buy us some new gear.

Some of the villagers even came to the mainland to cheer us on.

When we got to the tournament we were all nervous. But, once we got going, we realised that we were better than we thought.

Our skills had developed nicely on the wooden pitch … and the big goals were much easier to target than our little ones.

We made it to the semifinal.

The semi started badly. It was raining and the other team were really good. Our boots were filled with water which slowed us down a lot.

The other team were two goals up by half time.

With our spirits down, we couldn’t work out how to turn the game around. After a bad first half we needed to do something.

So we got rid of our wet boots.

Playing with bare feet was more comfortable for all of us. We were light on our feet and could move much faster.

We scored two goals and levelled the score.

But a last minute goal gave the other team the win.

We were disappointed but happy we had gotten this far. And the rest of the village were really proud of us.

After that, football became Panyee’s number one pastime.

We built a smooth new pitch that had no nails in it at all.

Editor’s Note: Panyee FC went on to become the youth football champions of Southern Thailand every year between 2004 and 2010!
[box type=\”shadow\”]If you enjoyed this post and feel that others in your social circle might appreciate or benefit from it, please feel free to share it using one or more of the social buttons below:[/box]