In Myanmar,90 minutes of unfettered freedom

The hardships and oppression of living in an authoritarian country like Myanmar all but vanish at the gates of its soccer stadiums.

The hardships and oppression of living in an authoritarian country like Myanmar all but vanish at the gates of its soccer stadiums. Or so say the fans,who swarm into the grandstands for a carnival of drunken revelry that would never be tolerated outside the stadium walls.

I dont come here to support any particular team, said Kyaw Lin,15,a high school student. I come for the freedom to yell anything I want. In Myanmar,with its layers of secret police and prison sentences of as much as 100 years for those who speak out against the government,a soccer match seems an island of raucous merriment in a sea of grinding poverty and fear. It is 90 minutes of seemingly unfettered liberty.

A World Cup qualifying match in July between Myanmars national team and Oman was called off by the Japanese referee before halftime after fans threw rocks,shoes and water bottles onto the field. The episode,however,has done little to diminish the enthusiasm in the grandstands.

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Im going to break your legs! yelled a fan as a striker moved down the field in the recent match. This was one of the more polite exclamations. The outdoor grandstand reeked of cheap liquor and the occasional pool of vomit. Myanmar,formerly Burma,is one of Asias most impoverished countries and also one of its most expensive. But two things are particularly cheap here: rice (about 15 cents for a small bucketful) and a ticket to soccer matches (70 cents). The Myanmar National League was formed with the governments encouragement in 2008. The government prodded supportive business executives to help finance the league and its 12 teams.

Now in its third season,the league has proved a particularly successful form of entertainment. Among the private publications allowed in Myanmar,sports newspapers outsell those devoted to general news,journalists say. When someone faces a lot of hardship and burdens in his daily life,he wants to forget them, said U Ko Htut,one of the countrys prominent writers on soccer. There are not many people who obtain success in our country, Ko Htut said.

We want to imagine we are football stars. Ko Htut was imprisoned for 13 years and tortured for perceived crimes related to his student activism during a major uprising in 1988. Writing about sports,he says,is the closest thing to freedom of expression in Myanmar. (The name of this articles author is being withheld because foreign journalists,with rare exceptions,are not officially allowed to report in the country.)

Entering a soccer stadium can be a Jekyll-and-Hyde experience. The Burmese,generally polite,leave civility at the gates.

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U Min Aung,29,owns a business and has a 3-year-old daughter. Once in the grandstands,he stripped off his shirt and paced drunkenly through the crowd,assailing the opposing team.

Occasionally he threw bottles onto the field. During a recent match he tried,unsuccessfully,to pry loose the concrete bleachers. Min Aung said in July he had joined the ruckus during the match between Myanmars national team and Oman. He showed no signs of remorse. The referee was unfair, he said. Everyone was throwing bottles. I did,too.

The rowdiness at soccer matches veers close to hooliganism. But tension is often defusedpartly,it seems,because many fans are too drunk to raise a fist. One reason for the raucousness at matches involving the national team is a deep frustration over a long decline in the teams performance in recent decades,said a sportswriter who is known by his pen name,Okocha.

Myanmars glory years came in the 1950s and 60s,when the national team won pan-Asian tournaments and regularly defeated its neighbours. Now FIFA ranks Myanmar 165th out of 203 national teams,behind countries like the Maldives and the Bahamas,which are not known for their soccer prowess. We are in a very bad state, Okocha said.