State of Malaysian Football

I still could recall my numerous trips to Merdeka Stadium, watching and supporting the Selangor state team or even Malaysia in those Merdeka Cup tournaments. How proud was I of the teams I had supported.

Well, gone were the days of those memorable wins over South Korea and Japan. Now this 2 nations have taken the world by storm even with their own local leagues respectively.

Minnows like Philippines, Laos and Vietnam were whipping boys for Malaysia in the yesteryears but it's a total different story nowadays. Today, these 3 teams stand an equal chance of beating Malaysia on their good days. Vietnam, even though football league is corrupted internally, is well above Malaysia's standards.

Why? It will be hard as long as Malaysia do not revamp how their football teams were being managed. Not that I knew lots about it but the fact where royalty members and chief ministers holding on to the highly ranked positions is good enough. What the heck do they know about football? All they care about is their own ego. Do you see any British royal family members holding any post in the English FA or in any of the English football clubs? They should as they are world class but they didn't.

What developments did our royalty members/chief ministers brought for Malaysian football after all these years and that too, dumping hundreds of millions into it and the results were getting trashed by China (5-1) - China hammer co-hosts Malaysia and Uzbekistan (5-0) Uzbeks trounce sorry Malaysia in the on-going AFC Asian Cup 2007. Another trashing by Iran in the last group match? The headline could be "Iran was more at home than Malaysia".

As long as the football management was not done professionally, Malaysia will continue to drop down the world rankings. Who bothers anyway even if it goes up. Rumours surfaced that even the New Economic Policy played a part for the downfall of Malaysian football. What? How is that so? Well, by limiting the participation of certain race or ensuring a certain percentage for a particular race was there at all times. This is not football !!!!

If you are asking where does Malaysia's football future lies ahead then that's the wrong question to ask. You should ask "When are we getting professional football management back into the system?"

A friend in the local football management once told me, that the main reason for those royalty members/chief ministers helming top football management positions was because they were able to source for sponsorships easily. Meaning to say, the rest of the management teams were not doing their work at all for having to rely on only the top person to source such sponsorships.

The Football Association of Malaysia's Deputy President, the son of the Sultan of Pahang, has tendered his resignation due to Malaysia's poor results in the Asian Cup. Would say that he should have tendered donkey years ago as Malaysian football was in doldrums all these years, not recently.

I'm waiting for his father (Sultan of Pahang) to do the same, resign as President of FAM. He has been holding this position for decades. Please do justice to the state of our Malaysian football. And also from the state teams please, each and everyone of you royal family members and chief ministers. It's the same scenario for all the sports association in Malaysia.

This blog posting may not be read by the people concerned and FAM won't be bothered at all. But generally out there, who's talking about it during chit chats or while lepaking at mamak stalls. For that matter, some people who have received free tickets from sponsors, were not even bothered to go for those matches especially when it involved the national team. As for those who went, they were there to see how China whacked Malaysia instead of supporting Malaysia (hehehe....they were not bookies in knowing that China will win but everyone could have guessed the result, only the scoreline).

Malaysia still Boleh?
Tags: Sports, Football, Soccer, Malaysia, Sultan of Pahang, Football Association of Malaysia, FAM, Asian Cup, English FA