FAM weakness is own folly, we need a change now

IT lasted an hour and 30 minutes. Ninety minutes - just like a football match.

And fittingly, Asian Football Confederation (AFC) secretariat chief Datuk Seri Windsor Paul and his deputy Vahid Kardany covered exactly 11 areas of concern.

Eleven problems, like 11 players on a field. Except this was no game. There were no winners here, only a nation’s football dream, laid bare and bleeding on the floor.

The Football Association of Malaysia (FAM) are on the danger of collapse, the emergency congress heard – and the call for reform was loud.

What was presented at the congress was, by Windsor’s own admission, merely the tip of the iceberg.

“The report you saw was seen for the first time by everyone at the congress, including those from FAM,” he said. “We did not reveal everything because we want to show all of it to FAM’s secretariat soon.”

Yet, what already revealed was already damning. One shudders to imagine what remains concealed beneath the surface.

The verdict is clear. The FAM are an organisation where governance exists only on paper, authority rests in the hands of a chosen few, and staff are too frightened to speak up, even as things collapse around them.

Kardany, who led the joint AFC-FIFA audit team over four months, found that governance structures have never been formally approved or enforced by the executive committee.

Authority has been informally concentrated at the top, bypassing every institutional framework meant to ensure accountability.

Critical functions are built around specific personalities rather than durable systems, meaning should those individuals leave, entire operational pillars crumble with them.

Most alarming is the near-total absence of even the most basic management tools. Not a single department produces annual business plans, activity calendars, or performance reports. No Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) or performance measurement frameworks exist.

Policies have been drafted, left unapproved, and rendered unenforceable, sitting as potential legal liabilities, gathering dust.

Staff have been handed expanded responsibilities without any assessment of whether they have the capacity to carry them.

Institutional knowledge across most departments is concentrated in just two or three individuals, with absolutely no succession planning.

Most corrosive of all is the culture of fear that permeates the organisation.

Staff are routinely suppressed from raising concerns, allowing problems to fester quietly in the shadows until they become full-blown crises.

In terms of overall maturity, FAM have been rated a pre-intermediate, Level Two organisation, a body still fumbling through the earliest stages of building what any professionally-run football federation should already have long mastered.

This is a 99-year-old institution representing a proud footballing nation of 33 million people.

And who is being asked to fix it?

I was told a former president may make a return - this was a man who sat at the helm during the very period this audit examined.

One can argue that people change, that an overhaul is possible, that reform is coming and this time will be different. But enough is simply enough.

The atmosphere inside the congress hall told its own story.

Some delegates appeared entirely unconcerned, as though the devastating findings being presented were someone else’s problem entirely.

A few were overheard muttering — “cukup manis, dapat 1.2 daripada takda” (Getting 1.2 out of five is better than nothing). They were grateful for scraps, wholly unbothered by the institutional rot being laid bare before them.

It speaks volumes about the culture of low expectations that has taken deep root.

Some looked lost during key presentations. When en bloc voting was called, several delegates did not even know what the term meant.

Windsor had to explain it, patiently, carefully, as one might to children hearing the concept for the very first time.

Few asked pertinent questions about the statute changes being proposed. The hall felt less like the governing body of a national sport and more like a room full of people simply waiting for it all to be over.

Reform requires people with the spine to enforce them. It was not on display yesterday.

A Malaysian football jersey is worn with pride. That badge deserves far better than to be a source of ridicule, like when seven “mixed-heritage” players betrayed it on the pitch, or or when delegates in a congress hall just could not care.

Malaysian football does not need another report. It does not need another audit. It needs new leadership, genuine accountability, and the courage to actually mean it this time.

It has to change.