A Metfone C-League season preview: Six Burning Questions

With the new 2016 Metfone Cambodian League kicking off this evening with the champions Phnom Penh Crown hosting the Japanese-seasoned Cambodian Tiger here are, in the flavour of the moment listicle-style, six burning questions for the upcoming season.

Will National Team ‘success’ help development of Cambodian players?

Success is, of course, relative but the participation in a competitive World Cup qualifying group (albeit with a record of seven losses out of seven; 21 goals conceded one scored) can only have benefited and generated valuable experience for key players. A narrow, perhaps unlucky, defeat against Afghanistan through a 6-0 home drumming in a deluge versus Syria to a couple of highly commendable performances in Singapore (2-1 defeat) and then at the Olympic Stadium versus Japan (2-0 defeat).

Shinji Kagawa, Leicester City’s Premier League title chasing striker Shinji Okazaki, and Keisuke Honda sharing a pitch with Keo Sokpheng, Khoun Laboravy, and Chinn Chhouen et al. and the Khmer not humiliated. Hopefully a solid step in building the capacity, technique, skill, and belief of the Cambodian players.

How many matches will be fixed?

Credit to Phnom Penh Crown for trying to be professional in circumstances that make tennis, and the ITF look, like a paradigm of cleanliness and virtue. Cambodia is ranked 150th globally by Transparency International and football clearly does not operate in a vacuum.

Match-fixing and club disharmony saw seven Crown players – including Sos Suhana the scorer of the only Cambodian goal in World Cup Qualifying – dismissed. Four were immediately signed by rivals Naga World. At the end of last season two teams folded and left the league a third, CMAC United, only saved by an injection of East Asian cash; with the gap between the best and the rest wide conditions are in place for further corruption.

CV11 – how good can he be and will he stay?

Player of the year. Player of the Mekong Club Championship. 37 league goals last year in a 22 game season.

He may be surprisingly underused by Lee Tae-Hoon and the National Team but Chan Vathanaka is the most exciting and dynamic Cambodian footballer and the leading star in the team that topped the league last season and mixed with the best of Mekong football.

In the close season there were rumours of a possible move to Japan – could CV11 be a successful local export from the Metfone Cambodian League to bigger and better things ? Lets enjoy his presence when he is still here.

Will Kelechi and Booysen be as good as the double Bs?

Last season George Bisan and Shane Booysen scored 48 goals, 63% of Phnom Penh Crown’s total, forming the league’s most deadly striking duo. In the close season the Nigerian Bisan signed for Than Quảng Ninh F.C. of Vietnamese League One. Crown replaced him with compatriot George Kelechi from Asia Euro Utd – a scorer of 23 goals last season. Phnom Penh Crown management will be hoping, amidst the major fluxes in coaching staff, that this African duo is as effective as the double B partnership. 

How many points with Phnom Penh Crown and Boeung Ket Angkor drop?

Barcelona and Real Madrid. Celtic and Rangers. A few leagues have a duoply of power.

Last season Phnom Penh Crown and Boeung Ket Angkor dominated the regular season league in emphatic style picking up 82% of league points available to them. Their goal difference was +53 and +55 respectively and the two teams, on average, won every match 3.5 to 1.1.

This season, with the play-off structure abandoned and a simple regular league season, are the opposition stronger or will these two teams run away with one of the most two-sided leagues in the world?

On paper Boeung Ket Angkor look weaker than last season, to date only three foreign players registered, whilst will internal issues (the new manager being replaced by the old manager ) impact Phnom Penh Crown? I would predict that the gap between these two teams, and potentially stronger Naga and National Defence, may be less than last season.

An influential East Asia Element?

As in many things in the Kingdom of Wonder the footprint of Japan and Korea is heavy on the countries football. One team – Cambodia Tiger – as Japanese as they come complete with mental half-time chorography whilst CMAC United were apparently sufficiently saved by Japanese investment to enter this season’s league championship.

On the pitch an equally East Asian element – at least 20 Japanese or Korean players registered as overseas professionals across the 10 C-League teams.  Only Phnom Penh Crown, for whom ironically it was South Korean Baek Yong-Son who scored the penalty that won last season’s title, without an East Asian player.

Intriguingly two North Koreans will further cement the special relationship with a country even more dismally rated by Transparency International than Cambodia. Kim Kyong-Hon and Choe Myong Ho, the latter apparently ‘the North Korean Ronaldo’, have signed for National Defence Ministry.

League Table Prediction

1.     Phnom Penh Crown (last season 2^nd but Champions via Play-off)

2.     Boeung Ket Angkor (1^st)

3.     Naga World (3^rd)

4.     National Defence Ministry (5^th)

5.     Svay Rieng (6^th)

6.     National Police (7^th)

7.     Cambodian Tiger (3^rd)

8.     Asia Europe Utd (10^th)

9.     Western Phnom Penh (11^th)

10. CMAC United (9^th)