COMMENT | Malaysian football: No way home
COMMENT | Recurring villains have been the main reason behind the success of the latest Spiderman movie, "Spiderman: No Way Home".
To date, it has become the first Hollywood movie to earn US$1 billion during the pandemic area. Such a feat is amazing considering the fact that it is not even released in China’s cinema market. Yet.
Recurring villains evoked special memories that somehow attract moviegoers to flock to the cinema.
This formula has seen recent success in Hollywood, and don't expect it to go away anytime soon in future superhero flicks.
Malaysian football has many past and present villains. Just like in the movie, the same villains keep on re-appearing again, though these are ones whom we hardly missed.
The recently concluded AFF Championship saw some...
COMMENT | Recurring villains have been the main reason behind the success of the latest Spiderman movie, "Spiderman: No Way Home".
To date, it has become the first Hollywood movie to earn US$1 billion during the pandemic area. Such a feat is amazing considering the fact that it is not even released in China’s cinema market. Yet.
Recurring villains evoked special memories that somehow attract moviegoers to flock to the cinema.
This formula has seen recent success in Hollywood, and don't expect it to go away anytime soon in future superhero flicks.
Malaysian football has many past and present villains. Just like in the movie, the same villains keep on re-appearing again, though these are the ones whom we hardly missed.
The recently concluded AFF Championship saw some inept decisions made by the Football Association of Malaysia (FAM).
The tournament’s organiser had allowed every participating country to bring 30 players, but FAM had decided to bring 24 players, six short of what is being permitted.
This act of hara-kiri baffled many fans as any outbreak of Covid-19 in the team during this pandemic era would totally disrupt the national team preparation.
As luck or rather a misfortune would have it, an outbreak did happen. Coupled with some injuries, Tan Cheng Hoe, who recently resigned as Harimau Malaya head coach, was left with only 18 players fit for selection during match day.
The good news was it happened during the later part of the group stage. However, the bad news was our opponents for the later part were Indonesia and Vietnam which are Asean football powerhouses.
Some of the young players did not have enough international experience to play against the big guns.
Thus, new players were called up to reinforce the depleted squad.
This seemingly preferential treatment did not escape the ire of other national team coaches, especially Park Hang Seo from Vietnam, who lambasted the organiser for allowing it to happen and said we should own our mistake.
Nevertheless, the additional recruitment did not help much apart from increasing the number of players available for selection. Our team was comfortably beaten by Indonesia and Vietnam.
Poor scheduling
Secondly, poor scheduling of local football hampered our national team preparation. Our first match in the AFF Championship was held on Dec 5, merely five days after the final of the Malaysia Cup which concluded our local football calendar.
This short amount of time of get-togetherness was probably only for that, ie to get together.
Proper training takes time, and there was barely any left for the manager to infuse tactical nous of his gameplan to the player.
FAM may argue that the postponement of the tournament (twice!) affects its own scheduling effort, but we do know that this is somehow amenable.
Or perhaps FAM had other priorities. Asian Cup qualifier will take place in June this year and offer a more lucrative spot in the international football scene.
Was FAM serious in putting the team for AFF Championship? We will never know.
Naturalised players
Next, comes the question of naturalised players. FAM has been practicing the policy for the past decade hoping that their physical attribute will add some quality to the national team.
In this campaign, their performance has been generally disappointing if not poor.
I still remember in 2010, the year we won the AFF Championship for the first time, there was not a single naturalised player in the national squad.
Heck, even the top scorer of the tournament was a lad born in Kajang, Malaysia.
Our top neighbouring teams were able to put on an energetic, mouth-watering display this time without having to rely on naturalised players.
This raises the question of whether the policy of employing naturalised players by FAM does improve or worsen the state of our national football team.
One can say pointing fingers is easy, but FAM as a national body entrusted to handle our country's football affairs must quickly learn from recent mistakes.
Millions have been spent over the past decades and we still see little in return.
Other sports such as hockey and rugby have earned reputable international status and are gaining more support from locals.
Maybe it is time that we look at other options as a source of national pride?
Just like in the movie, avid Marvel fans will usually stay glued to the screen until the end for post-credit scenes hoping to catch a glimpse of what is going to happen next.
Today we, the football fans, rarely stay until the end of any campaign because we know the ending is somehow as expected.
Football is not coming home.
AHMAD ZULKIFLI has been following local football for 15 years.
The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of Malaysiakini.
