Fans lament Mui's uneventful year with La Liga
Football star Teerasil 'Mui' Dangta, one of Thailand's best strikers, has called off his relationship with Almeria in Spain's La Liga, terminating his one-year contract a little early.
Mui departed for Spain amid roars of pride last February – the international press hailed the first Thai footballer ever to play in the Spanish big leagues, for “The League” – but he came back last week with a whimper.
The fact is that Almeria didn’t make much use of Mui during his stay, so it’s not entirely his fault that he didn’t score a single goal for the team. His total time on the field amounted to 132 minutes. Mui says he just wanted to get back where there was plenty of action for him, with his old squad, SCG Muang Thong United.
His decision has drawn a mixed reaction from Thai fans. Everyone was pretty excited when he got called up to play for the world’s top football league and most people expected him to hang in there for a long time and accomplish great things.
There’s been plenty of sympathy – Mui must have been awfully homesick, and he was nothing more than a benchwarmer, getting onto the pitch for just six Almeria matches and for one outing in the Spanish Cup – the only time he did score a goal.
Mui admits that the language barrier played a big part in him being left on the bench. “I had problems communicating with the coach and my teammates,” he says. “It was difficult for me to understand the tactics.”
Less-appreciative observers have said Mui just lacked the will to persevere and advance to the next level, that he gave up too easily. “He should have stayed and got acclimatised,” a commentator on sports radio station FM 99 moaned.
Some of Mui’s supporters ultimately went overboard, though, piling onto the Almeria Facebook page and bombarding the club with nasty comments. They were gutted that Teerasil hadn’t made it big and laid all the blame squarely on Almeria. There was a campaign to “unlike” the Almeria page en masse and curses evoked that the club should be relegated.
On the other hand (and thank you, other hand), a lot of Thais stayed cool and politely thanked Al meria for giving Mui and chance and wished the club well. After all, Mui is quite prepared to shoulder the bulk of the blame for dropping out. It was his decision to go and he did try his best, but he just didn’t succeed.
We can only hope that what happened with Mui doesn’t discourage other Thai football stars from trying to get a kick at the international level.
