Higher goals for our football

IT’S time to talk about football. Even the Prime Minister is doing so. He says he loves two football teams – Manchester United and obviously the national team to whom he has just given RM15mil.

The two teams have one thing in common – they are both in the doldrums with many fans turning against them.

There’s not much one can say about the Red Devils. Some of their players earn more in a week than I could in several years, so we will leave it to the likes of Erik Ten Hag to sort them out.

But there’s a lot to be said about Harimau Malaya, and about Malaysian football as a whole. It’s not just about the quality. The Tigers have had quite a bit of a comedown.

The National Stadium on Wednesday was a stark reminder of that. The 85,000-capacity stadium saw a measly crowd of 3,000 when Malaysia played the Philippines in the once prestigious tournament there.

Of those who showed up, many said they had only come because they had free tickets. The “Ekor Harimau Malaya” (Harimau Malaya supporters) group, comprising supporters from several states, is boycotting the tournament, and thus the empty stadium.

Still, those who came did go home happy. The national team came from a goal down to beat the Philippines 2-1. It was good enough for them to qualify for the final tomorrow.

The final? One win over tiny Philippines, ranked 147th in the world, and you are in the final? Yes, there are only four teams in the fray, and none are the type to raise eyebrows.

It is sad in many ways, and a huge comedown too for the Merdeka Tournament. Once the premier football meet in all of Asia, it was scrapped in 2003 and only returned last year after a 10-year absence. It has not been quite the same.

Once, South Korea, Japan, Iraq, even Western Australia and some African nations would hope to be invited. It was a time when we saw the likes of Kunishige Kamamoto of Japan, Cha Bum-kun of South Korea, Abedi Pele of Ghana and our own Ghani Minhat, Mokhtar Dahari and Shaharuddin Abdullah in action. Not any more.

We still have some good players, but the thing is, we have many problems. And trouble has been brewing for months, from April to be exact.

That was when the group of supporters sent a letter to the Football Association of Malaysia (FAM) containing a host of allegations.

The fans wanted the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) to investigate FAM. There were claims about the “unfair” dismissal of FAM staff members. There were also claims over a lack of transparency in the tender process for the National Training Centre project.

Those may be unproven claims, but there are other problems that are out in the open.

For one thing, there has been the perennial problem of wages not being paid by clubs in the Malaysian Football League. Over the last few days, the Kedah players are said to be boycotting their training because of salary issues.

There were also issues with Kuala Lumpur FC, and even the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) is said to have launched an investigation into the alleged breaches of club licensing rules.

But the straw that broke the Tiger’s back must have been the sudden exit of national coach Kim Pan-gon. The South Korean, a crowd favourite, had overseen a resurgence of the national team. Pan-gon, who took over in early 2022, helped take the nation to 134th in the world rankings, from No. 153 in December 2021. We were even at No. 130 in January this year.

He also helped Malaysia qualify for the Asian Cup on merit for the first time in 42 years, and produced what was the country’s best result in recent times – a 3-3 draw with South Korea in Group E at the Asian Cup late last year.

For that, they were rewarded with RM5mil. But it was no real success. They finished last in their group after losing 4-0 to Jordan and 1-0 to Bahrain earlier.

Pan-gon later quit abruptly, citing personal commitments but has since joined Ulsan HD FC, sparking all sorts of rumours. Was there something more than meets the eye in his resignation?

Many fans seem to think so.

FAM is one of the richest, if not the richest, sports association in the country. It gets millions from FIFA and even more millions from the sponsors. It lists among its sponsors Malaysia Airlines, Bank Islam, Nestle, Nike, AEON Big and Grab Malaysia. The funds keep pouring in.

Was there a need for another RM15mil for the association?

Maybe the money should have gone elsewhere. We need to get our football up and kicking again, and naturalising more foreigners cannot be the answer. Indeed, we have to look within – at the young kids in schools.

We must stop taking away playing fields from these kids in the name of development, forcing them to play football on their screens.

We need to get them out there, under the watchful eyes of adults who love football. That used to be teachers.

But these days, most teachers seem to have a place in heaven as their goal, not creating footballers.

However, there still are those who want to build our football. I know of many small clubs in Kuala Lumpur, Selangor, Negri Sembilan and Penang where volunteers are spending their own money to get kids interested in sports, especially football.

Former state and national players are being recruited to coach these youngsters in the hope of finding the new R. Arumugam, Soh Chin Aun, James Wong, Santokh Singh, Shukor Salleh or Hassan Sani.

The RM15mil would be better spent on these clubs.

But what do I know? I support Queens Park Rangers and Penang. Those are a bunch of perennial losers too.