Because there is nothing to write about, since the footballing heydays of Soh Chin An, Santokh Singh, Mokhtar Dahari, R. Arumugam, James Wong, Chow Chee Keong, Wong Chong Wah and Hassan Sani & Co in the 70s and 80s.
Then, we were the Asian tigers. And we even managed to qualify, not once but, twice for the Olympics.
Now we are just mosquitoes in football. So, I was ROTFL when the Star sport writer R. Manogaran wrote (Star Sport 22 Nov 2012) that it was disappointing that the Malaysian football team had suffered two defeats and only managed two draws in friendlies against lightweight teams in their preparation for the AFC Suzuki Cup tournament.
Dear brother, Vietnam, Hong Kong, Bangladesh and certainly Thailand are not lightweight teams (anymore) compared to the Malaysian football team. We are the minnows now really, there just to make up the numbers.
But I do agree with you that the Football Association of Malaysia (FAM) has no clue at all on how to improve the standard of Malaysian football. Do they bother or care? They are just content to let things be. And how can we blame them for their lack of initiative when they have no idea what football is all about, except making up the numbers and letting the world know that at least we still have a football team to talk about?
No wonder we have been staggering around like drunken, toothless tigers who have lost their roar something like three long decades now. Left only to confer datukships and monetary rewards on players and coach on the rare occasions that we managed to win something like the Sea Games a year ago or the insignificant Suzuki Cup the last time around two years back. Ha ha!
And how can we expect Malaysian football to go far when players nowadays act, think and behave more like prima donnas, minus any prima to boast of or about in the first place and officials in the position to instill discipline coyly giving in.
Look at how the Terengganu state football officials recently sacked their state team coach Peter Butler just because the latter dared to take disciplinary action against errant players for lack of discipline and behaving badly for being substituted and perhaps you might have an idea of how difficult it is to uplift the standard of Malaysian football.
Dear R. Manogaran, you are right. Malaysians, including yours truly, no longer give a hoot to Malaysian football.
We are better off enjoying the EPL or even European football, and, like you correctly pointed out, most of us know the names of every player of our favourite EPL team. Few of us, if any, can correctly tell you the names or even some of the names of the Malaysian team.
I, for one, can't tell you even a single name of the current Malaysian team. And I don't care a hoot!
The travesty is that we still call our national football team "Harimau Malaysia" or "Malaysian Tigers"!
Toothless, drunken tigers - more like!
Its undoubtedly true that the standard of football in Malaysia is at levels not adequate to a vibrant, economically robust and overall emerging country like Malaysia. Not to mention the growing population and the high passion that all Malaysia have for football. To pinpoint faults and responsibilities, as important as it,surely is not enough. What is needed is active and objective pro-positive engagement from all interested parties, first and foremost the media, all kind of media. Is only through a strong, balanced an engaging discourse that we might one day witness a Malaysian Football spring!
ReplyDelete@ Massimo, very true much of what you said. I can't agree with you more. Thanks for your input and thanks for passing by.
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