Southeast Asia: Blogging about Football · Global Voices
Mong Palatino

There are many football blogs in Southeast Asia that provide relevant news stories and updates about football matches and programs in the region. Through email, I interviewed Erick Bui of Vietnam Football and Chamroeun of Cambodia Football Roubroum about football blogging in Southeast Asia.
Photo from Flickr page of Nhy Nguyen used under CC License Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic
Erick gives a brief history of football in Vietnam
Football is unarguably the main and most supported sport in Vietnam. Its annual V-League competition has taken place since 1980.
When Vietnam was split into North Vietnam and South Vietnam, two national teams existed…After Vietnam was united in 1975, Vietnamese football suffered a long time of stagnation. In 1991, Vietnam national football team played its first international match.
Vietnamese football has made a lot of improvement since then. Both Vietnam national team and V-League are now one of the best in ASEAN region.
Erick names his motivation in maintaining an English blog about football in Vietnam
Contrary to the big number of football sites in Vietnamese, there are few English sites about local football on the net. That's the reason why I started Vietnam Football blog in order to help people know more about football in my country. I have a lot of friends overseas who are also football fans. They often question me about Vietnamese football because they find it quite hard to find the info. Looking at this matter, I think an English football blog can be an essential link between Vietnam and the world. I have the passion and decent football knowledge so I really enjoy blogging about Vietnamese football
Chamroeun is the first Cambodian football blogger. Through his blog, Cambodia Football Roubroum, he shares information about football games in Cambodia
I launched my personal blog on July 2008. My main goal is to spread the news on Cambodian football.
I noticed that our two neighboring countries, Thailand and Vietnam, have better football programs. The players are well-paid. But in Cambodia, the footballers are not really in good condition. Most of them play for free or with low salaries. However, our football has changed a lot in the last five years. Now we have a professional league which is sponsored by a Vietnamese company.
Erick and Chamroeun are also linking to other football blogs in the region. They recommend these websites: Jakarta Casual for Indonesia and Singapore, Thai Port Football Club for Thailand, S-league: Facts & Figures for Singapore, Filipino Football for the Philippines, Soccer Myanmar, Foul from Malaysia and aseanfootball.org which gives regional sports updates. These blogs also link to local football websites.
Haresh Deol, the blogger who maintains Foul from Malaysia, discusses sports betting which was a big issue in Malaysia a few months ago.
Talk about legalising sports betting is objected by many parties. Gambling is not healthy for all – majority or minority. Politicians are using this issue as a perfect avenue to claim how righteous and religious they are. The government should EXPLAIN the situation properly
I’m not for gambling, as I’m not for smoking. If it’s unhealthy, it's unhealthy. But if it's a good method to monitor the outflow of our Ringgit (author’s note: Malaysian currency) and a source of income for the government, why not?