Words Ted Delahoy

My name is Ted Delahoy, I’m a photographer who loves football.

Over the next few months I’m going to be traveling all over Asia: throughout my journey I will be searching out all things football and documenting my findings right here. Without further ado, the first stop on my Asian adventure is… Frankfurt.

My trip had a 12-hour layover in Frankfurt and instead of sitting in the airport I got the train into the city hungry to satisfy my need for football and strudel.

I have a fondness for a big city with one main football team, it feels like it unites the city instead of divides it. Frankfurt gave the impression of a city behind its team, perhaps helped by the club’s recent Europa League triumph.

Straight away in the Central Station there was Uddin’s, a restaurant and Eintracht Frankfurt themed sports bar. As soon as I crossed the river there was another, Zur Glocke, in the shadow of the impressive Dreikönigskirche (although covered in scaffolding at the time).

*Zur Glocke sports bar in Frankfurt proudly flying their team’s flag*

Walking around the city, which was much prettier than I had imagined, you couldn’t go two minutes without spotting Eintracht Frankfurt stickers or graffiti. I particularly enjoyed the use of these stickers in the parks. All the green spaces I wandered around had, for no apparent reason, signs banning people from playing football. Therefore, the SGE fans responded by covering these signs in their club’s stickers, a nice response I thought.

*Anti-football signs in Oppenheimer Platz, Frankfurt*

It was time to head back to the airport for my flight so I finished my strudel and was on my way to Kathmandu, the capital of Nepal where my adventure would really begin.

I have never been to Asia before, the furthest I’ve been in that direction is Croatia and let me tell you Nepal is very different. It’s chaotic, loud but above all, brilliant.

All I knew about Kathmandu before arriving there was that it was surrounded by the Himalayas (most notably Everest) and that it was in a valley where all around the city was greenery, mainly rice fields and jungle. I rather enjoyed the culture shock, not understanding what was going on around me was exactly why I’d come to this part of the world. This confusion can also be applied to the football culture in Nepal.

*The chaos of Kathmandu traffic next to Tundikhel Park*

The top league in Nepal is the Martyr's Memorial A-Division League, however, 2021 saw the launch of the Nepal Super League which had 10 separate teams enter the first year’s competition.

It feels like the future of football in Nepal is going to change in the coming years and it remains to be seen if this Super League becomes a success, but in the meantime the A-Division is an interesting league to look into.

The A-Division teams include the newly promoted Church Boys United, Nepal Police Club and the Nepal Army Club. Coming from the home of the English Premier League the idea of the Police vs the Army doesn’t sound like a top-flight match, but it does sound very entertaining. Would you make a tactical foul on the Chief of Police if he was through on goal? Would you launch into a 50/50 with a Major General? I’d want to watch to find out.

*Nepali Military Academy vehicles by Nepal Army Club’s stadium*

For a country so full of greenery, the city of Kathmandu had surprisingly few places you could play football.

The biggest park was next to the Army training base and where the Nepal Army Club is based. This huge park is split in two by barbed wire, one side belongs to the Army, which has nice green cut grass and the other public side is overgrown with knee high grass and full of massive patches of dirt and rocks.

*A woman walks along the dividing line of Tundikhel Park*

Football is basically unplayable in the public side of the park; the only use of the football goals was for fielders to sit on while playing cricket.

*A fielder rests on a goalpost during a game of cricket*

Football just doesn’t seem very accessible for the local people.

Several of the main top teams are run by organisations such as the Police and Army and the only good places to play are seemingly cut off to the public. I tried to visit the Nepal Police Club but I wasn’t allowed to get anywhere near it thanks to a permanent armed Police road block.

Is football purposely made inaccessible to try and get members of the public more inclined to join one of these organisations? I don’t know, what I do know is, as in Frankfurt with the anti-football signs, more value needs to be put on places where sports can be played.

You may be thinking that maybe the locals don’t like football that much, perhaps they just aren’t that interested? Throughout my time in Nepal it was clear this wasn’t the case.

I constantly saw locals in football shirts, every bar seemingly was showing a match from somewhere around the world. This passion for the beautiful game was further demonstrated when one morning I went on a hike with a guide named Saroj.

One of the first things Saroj asked me was where I was from, I replied “England, a place called Leicester”. I was fully expecting him to have no idea where that was but he instantly started talking about Ranieri and the title winning season. He even went on to say that Jamie Vardy was the best player because he stayed loyal to Leicester when others left for more money, further endearing my new best mate to me.

*My trek guide Saroj in the hills surrounding Kathmandu*

Saroj went on to say how popular the Premier League was in Nepal and that he was a fan of Manchester United and Liverpool, an interesting combination I thought.

This made me both happy and sad. Happy, because many of the people here shared the same obsession as me and also because my country has the best league in the world at a time when there isn’t much else to be proud of in the UK. Sad, as the people here have the passion but hardly anywhere to express this passion.

Hopefully the future of Nepali football is bright. The interest is there so let’s just hope the people at the top take notice and make the game more accessible to the public.

Don't park the bus; Nepal