PRESTASI BOLA SEPAK MALAYSIA: Much Ado About The State Of Malaysian Football

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Much Ado About The State Of Malaysian Football

Days of glory when football was free of political squabble/The Star“Criticism is something you can easily avoid by saying nothing, doing nothing, and being nothing.” ~Aristotle

We can’t think of a better quote to kick off the subject of Malaysia’s national football woes.

When it comes to overreacting to criticisms and playing the blame game, no TV soap opera plot or Taiwanese parliament fistfight can ever come close to the level of drama, controversy, debacle occurring within the Football Association of Malaysia (FAM).

Nowadays, if you come across a report about Malaysian football in the news, you’d be hard pressed to find a positive commentary about the team, players, coaches, officials, game scores or national football association.

Perhaps this is because expectations are high; no other national sporting event is followed by Malaysians as keenly as Malaysian football.

And the reason for this is because all Malaysians, even the casual, non-football fans, are longing for that moment when Malaysian football returns to the days of the 1980s glory when the national football team earned their rightful place in international football history.

Those days, it was possible for a team of local boys from the kampungs and small towns to get together and form a formidable national team that is as skilful and competitive as the best football teams of the world.

Today, our national football team pale in comparison, only showing flashes of glory, raising hopes in one tournament only to lose in the next.

Dali Omar, a 67-year-old Kelantanese, who made a name for himself with Australian First Division side Azzurri of Perth (now known as Perth Glory) in 1972, said that Malaysia are lagging so far behind the giants of the game and that “Malaysian football is getting nowhere”.

Even football fans are different nowadays. Today’s fans spend more time watching and chatting about the game at themamak, or watch other people chatting about the game on TV than going out and actually playing football.

Dato Seri Dr. Ibrahim Saad/Google Images

We sought the answer from Dato’ Seri Dr. Ibrahim Saad, the former Secretary–General of FAM (2005-2007).

Has there been any worthwhile progress in Malaysian football?

When it comes to international football, admittedly, we have never really progressed.

We have never qualified higher than going into the final round of an international football tournament, like in Asia Cup for example.

That said we have made advances in the Southeast Asian football scene. We have won the SEA Games and AFF. That’s progress. Comparatively speaking of course.

But of course, there is a lot of room to improve.

Now that we have more club football teams and people involved, at least now we have a bigger and better pool of talents to choose from.

Is FAM solely to blame for our football team apparent lack of real progress?

Football should be considered as a national mission.

It shouldn’t be the sole concern of FAM alone; it should include everybody, schools, NGOs, and so on.

We should work together to raise the standard of football in Malaysia.

There are countries that has a lower standard of living than us yet has a football team that is far ahead than ours.

(Malaysia is in 158th position out of 190 countries in the FIFA world ranking. ranked lower than Thailand [117th], Singapore [127th], Vietnam [131th], Indonesia [132th], Hong Kong [137th] and India [147th])

The only thing people must remember is that everybody can be involved in improving (national) football. FAM only comes in when it comes to rules and regulations.

Do we have enough funding to advance national football to a higher level?

It’s like any investment; it takes time for it to bear fruit. There are a lot of countries that pour private money into their national football efforts but they are not going anywhere.

When I was Sec-Gen of FAM, I had very small budget to work with. Not more than RM9 million.

It was a time when there were little to no corporate sponsors. Astro was not around then.

But somehow I managed to revive the Merdeka Tournament with practically no budget.

Still, our national hockey team gets less funding and yet they are more successful.

Well, that’s because hockey has less number of countries competing than compared to football.

And football has more countries participating than there are member countries in the United Nations. FIFA has higher member countries than the UN...................................................................

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