COMMENT | I refer to the recent announcement made by Tunku Mahkota Johor Tunku Ismail Sultan Ibrahim on his resignation as the Football Association of Malaysia (FAM) president with immediate effect.

In a statement posted on the FAM Facebook page on Thursday, Tunku Ismail said the national team's ranking had dropped three places from 175 to 178 and to him, this was a big failure.

First of all, as a citizen of this country, I believe that TMJ has done exceptionally well as FAM president. Under his leadership, there were various great initiatives that were developed and launched for the football industry be it in commercial, sponsorship and youth development.

This is evident where, according to TMJ, for the first time in the history of Malaysian football, all the teams received between RM1 million and RM3 million annually, so they do not have to be dependent on government funding. Only a person of TMJ's stature and capability could have achieved this kind of success.

Not only that, the fact that under the leadership of TMJ, our U23, U19 and U16 teams have managed to make history when they represented the country at the highest level in Asia and this also clearly demonstrates the influence of TMJ in the national youth set-up.

TMJ is known as a person who is visionary and values professionalism and integrity and due to these traits, FAM is now reaping the success of its youth programme.

The drop in our senior squad ranking, of course, is something that the Malaysian football fans would not be happy with.

Reject resignation

Nevertheless, I seriously believe that without TMJ at the helm of FAM, our slide in the quality of our football could have been much worse and we might be worse off in terms of the Fifa ranking.

Because of TMJ's leadership skills and his passion and desire for success, he has managed to arrest the slide by only three places. Without TMJ, we would have probably dropped way further down the FIFA rankings than where we are now.

Nevertheless, we also have to remember that to improve the national senior squad takes time.

TMJ has just been elected as president of FAM for about only a year and to be honest, in this short span of time, FAM has achieved so much success.

The money is good, teams are being well-funded, the youth squads have improved and therefore it is just a matter of time before this success translates to the senior squad.

Therefore, I call upon the FAM council and leadership team to reject the resignation of TMJ and I myself humbly appeal to TMJ to reconsider his decision.

The FAM and also the football fans of Malaysia need the wisdom and leadership of TMJ to lead us back to the glory days of Malaysian football.

S VELL PAARI is MIC's treasurer-general and Malaysian Indian Sports Council member in charge of youth and development.

The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of Malaysiakini.