Fiji and ‘Batoro’: the Globalised Football

Since its creation, football spreads passion wordlwide: the most loved sport in the world is played in all continents, in every countries and the talent can be scouted from any particular place you want to look at. Media, marketing and professionalism can improve the conditions of your country and make it produce better and better players through times.

Internet helps a lot in this process; we can evaluate players and teams from almost all nations in the planet just through a click. The things have gotten easier and who does not adapt to the modern era of football is condemned to be at the bottom of the rankings.

It is not always a country, through its grassroots system, can produce world-class players in all the eleven positions in the pitch. It is a problem for its national team, but not for the local clubs. If the club has a good financial background, they have the right to look around in the football market to find the needed athlete to fill the blank in their rooster.

European football, the continent with the best players in the world has also the strongest financial background: they scout all over the planet to find the players they need – the biggest the scope, the biggest the chance to find what you want.

But, It does not seem to be understandable for some particular members of the Fijian football community. Batoro is a very commom word used by the Fijan users to describe pejoratively foreign players and players from another Fijian district – especially if they were signed by any of your club rivals.

In the present season of the Vodafone Premier League, four from the eight teams in the league have foreign players – and in their history, all of them at least had once a foreign player in their squad. So, why to call others Batoro?

The usage of the word Batoro has a deeper root that must not let any person proud of: xenophobia. It is understanble a certain fan wants to mock, or inferiorize the signing of its rival club, but, at a certain level, you are a mocking the nationality of person that is being contracted to work in your country: do not forget, footballers are workers.

Most recently, Ba was severely criticized for signing foreigners to reinforce their team for OFC Champions League. Fans from all other football associations inferiorized the signings of the club; weeks later, Lautoka announced the signings of another imports for their team, the same was done by Nasinu and Suva.

One commom answer from this type of action is the attempt to defend the ‘local talent’. First point: Vodafone Premier League and OFC Champions League have the foreign quota rules. A certain team can have dozens of foreigners, but they will be forced to play a minimum of local players in their squad. There is no reason to use this argument if your country has the foreign quota rule – it sounds only as an attempt to legitimize the usage of the pejorative word Batoro and its xenophobic roots.

As mentioned above: football is a global market – players from every continents fly to play in clubs based miles and miles away, from total different cultures and languages. Today, it is impossible to have a competitive team at continental stage without the exchange of players.

Biologically, the exchange of cultures is also helpful for the sport: humans are from the same race, but there are different ethnics worldwide. It allowed the existence of humans with different skills; an example is the physicality of the Africans and the speed of the Asians. The South Pacific islanders are genetically blessed with their strenght and good level of speed – one the responsibles for the good development of Rugby in the region, a much more phisical game than football. If you can combine your team with a strong defender and a speedy winger, as an example, from different nationalities, your team has a bigger chance to achieve its goals.

Football turned into a globalised sport decades and decades ago; the places that does not accept the reality of the game currently are condemned to not develop as they could. For the sake of its own football, Fiji needs to let it go this Batoro mentality and learn from the real football – and from democracy, away from preconceptions.

It is time to remember the players as Benjamin Totori and Brian Kaltak who helped Lautoka to reach an OFC Champions League final in 2018 and, most recently, remember the joy Dennis Ifunaoa allowed to the Labasa fans after scoring the winning goal at InterDistrict Championship.

If the Fijian clubs have a good financial background – good enough to pick around Oceania the best players from other countries – they have the right to do so. Exchange will get your own football stronger, since the foreign quota rules are there, your young generation has only to learn from the experience from overseas.