Leaping Forward
yess!! our malaysian football team did it... after a 20 year-long disappointment and a series of upsets, we finally bring back the shining gold medal to our hall of fame... i can say that you guys made malaysians proud... congratulations... now the big question and doubt is, can you guys keep this up? can you guys get a consistent result like this for the next 5 years? and the bigger question is, can you guys try to break in and compete to be in the same league as the giants of asian continent such as japan, south korea and iran? if we look to our current level of performance, we are still far far away from touching the seats of asian aristocrats of football... but if we look back to our long line of history, we should be surprised why is that up until now we havent be able to stand as tall sit as low with these giants... we used to beat these japanese or koreans team to pulp... but now, we are the minnows and a piece of chocolate cake to them...
from what i saw last night on live tv, our team is still lacking in almost every aspect... the basic techniques in football such as controlling, passing and shooting looked weak... still like schoolboys... we cant hold the possession more than 5 passes in the enemy territory... the players looked to have very slow reaction when they have the ball... meaning they just looked lost and cant decide what to do with the ball on their feet quickly... they are very slow in movement covering the area and assisting their team mates in defense or offense... their stamina looked quite didnt reach the level that they should be in.. they were exhausted when they reach the hour mark... the synchronization and understanding between players are still poor... the keeper can be good sometimes and sometimes he conceded a weird goal... the defenders were okay but it was only because they confronted by the equally clueless and slow vietnamese strikers... the midfielders didnt dictate the area commandingly and were nowhere to be found when the offense mode was on... and the strikers didnt have that killer instinct in front of the goal... our mental strength is still not that strong yet... yes they maybe can absorb pressure from the opposite supporters but certainly not string enough to handle the pressure on the pitch... our winning goal came from the courtesy of the poor vietnamese defender who scored an own goal...
when will we expand our wings higher and get our country's name up on the map once again? i dont think that we should be satisfied with just conquering the south east asian region... we need to raise up our quality of football and defeat the big guns on the asian stage and then we can eye the world stage... i want to ask each malaysians, dont you sick and tired of supporting other people's team? dont you want to see our nation to be there on the highest stage and be proud to wear the yellow and black stripes outfit and cheer our heads off to support our national team... dont you? we have been there, we have been at the prime position of asian football... we use to be feared by others... we have stepped our feet into the olympic finals in munich... we have clashed head to head with superstars of england in the likes of gary lineker and paul gascoigne... we used to have a name that is recognized by others... allahyarham mokhtar dahari... but now, what happened? our position in the fifa's world ranking has been plummeted in recent years... the results has been a constant yo-yo... and we dont have any star names in our lineups... stars that is recognized as one of a kind talent who can be compared with not to big names like steven gerrard or andrei arshavin but perhaps in the same region who has been constantly highlighted by their fans like bambang pamungkas for indonesia or kiatisuk senamuang for thailand... if we can have a world class player then what a lucky feat for us... because dont you malaysians feel very weird and ashamed that how can a country like us who is politically and economically stable who has all the world class facilities, world class coaches and certainly, a world class host in any events does not have a world class team? japan and south korea who were on par with us in the 70's and 80's now established themselves as the centre power of asian football and won the asian cup few times and appears in the fifa world cup regularly... other neighboring countries such as vietnam and laos who learn how to play football much much more later than us and used to be easy teams are now progressing rapidly catching up with us... based on the recent update of rankings issued on the 16th december 2009, countries such as thailand now is the 15th best team in asia and 105th in the world compared to us 33rd in asia and 160th in the world... they are just next door neighbor but a mountain's apart in terms of achievement... even indonesia, singapore, vietnam and myanmar are better than us in the rankings... our much so-called professional super league is categorized by asian football confederation (afc) as D-grade compared to indonesian and singaporean league in B-grade and thai league in C-grade... adding to the embarrassment, iraq, a country which is devastated by war and almost everything is destroyed during the war with the US, came to asian cup tournament 2007 in malaysian soil with almost nothing... they didnt have stadiums or gyms for proper training, they didnt have enough players to choose, no proper management and they didnt have enough pair of boots for the games but what happened? they completed one of the most inspiring and heroic stories in football by winning the tournament and become asian champions... by defeating the giants such as australia, south korea and saudi arabia who are all strengthened by their best players, who saw it coming? no one expected iraq to upset all the favorites... but us? we became the only host who failed to bag a single point in the tournament and managed to score only 1 goal but conceded the most of 12 goals in the group stage despite all the proper training in world class facilities and has enough players to choose from...
so what the hell is wrong with our football and who are there to blame? i maybe do not understand well enough what are the source of problems... the physical condition of our players? yes. we maybe small compared to arabs or the europeans but we have speed and agility... the small players always have speed advantage over big players and more agile if the players know how to exploit and train intensely with these advantage.. japanese and korean players have almost the same size as ours but they didnt seem to have much problem with it... i am a footballer myself and i have played with many footballers and saw some of them played too... what i saw is that i believe our malaysian footballers are more skillful and more technical than european footballers... we can dribble better than them... i see that our talents are very promising and our future is bright if we know how to harvest these talents properly... i think some of the problems originate from our own household and this mentality where most parents dont encourage their kids to participate actively in sports let alone to allow their kids to consider sports as their full-time career... i guess this mentality must be erased before we can see any further progress in our sports industry... by saying this, the government also must support in terms of promise a bright future to these athletes because what our parents care about is our future... from my point of view academic is not the only thing that provides a good life... there are some kids who dont do good in academic but have a real talent in sports but the parent insist that academic is the only way for them to survive... so these talents will remain hidden and get rusty over years... it is wrong totally... parents in europe and america send their kids to the academy at the early age of 2 years old for discovering their talent... their universities provide a place in their institution with full scholarships despite their lack of excellence in academic but as long as they have sports talents, so these universities provide them a clear path and help them to be national athlete... so these universities are not only to provide excellence in academic but excellence in sports as well... one thing that i notice is that whenever a football association wants to recruit new players, they advertise a call up for anyone who are interested to attend a trial out at the specific venue such as training ground at the state football complex... so i think instead of demanding these young kids to come down to their place, why dont the association set up a team of scouts and scatter them around the state urban and rural areas to find these hidden talents... all other countries did this... do you think kaka and ronaldinho came to the trials? hell no... it was the talent scouts who discovered them while they playing on the streets... and these scouts must be a real deal scouts who know how to see through these talents and not just somebody who does not know anything on talent scouting... or what we malay use to say it 'serkap jarang' or 'tangkap muat'... our highest association should provide more academies in every state and not just at the capital city... so in order to do that, we must not afraid to invest in hiring world class coaches just to train these youngsters of 2 and 3 years old... it is not necessarily that our senior team that gets to train with a world class coach... we should focus more on these kidlings better than the seniors because the seniors 'dah tak boleh dilentur dah'... and the FAM should collaborate with the ministry of education and try to organize school leagues in large scales in the stage of primary school or even from kindergarten or maybe a junior community league at every neighborhood.. a proper coach should be installed in each of these school.. not the PJ teachers... and these league must be monitored by state coaches... in the government side, they should provide more football grounds and constantly maintain these grounds... give extra budgets on developing the sports... from the corporate sector side, we should let them take over the football clubs from the states... we always hear the stories of players and coaches who didnt receive their salaries and the management are very very poor... too much bureaucracy in the state organization when we let the politician or the royal family to hold power, they have too much other responsibilities already... give it to the people who really know how football works and concentrate 100% in moving the association forward... do it like how our government installed datuk idris jala in order to save MAS from bankruptcy... and his sole purpose is to rebuild and restore MAS to its previous glory... most of the presidents of football association are kings, princes and ministers... they already fully-occupied with their tasks on taking care of the people so why dont give the job to people who can do their job 100% to serve the purpose of developing football... i understand that the corporate sector sees that our football industry is not profitable to them and that is why they tend to invest on buying the popular and profitable clubs such as clubs in the English Premier League and let our league sink deeper... i guess let the private sector owns and operates the clubs whether the owners are from malaysia or foreigners... we will not loose the identity or our pride and patriotism if we invite these foreign investors to buy our clubs... in fact it is for our own good and less a burden to the state governments... why we do not try to adopt these kind of systems to our football development... sometimes i really want to know why we do not take examples from the success nation of football... and our league should not be teams like state teams of selangor and then there are clubs like selangor pkns... so the fans will of course support the state teams and usually an empty stadium for club teams... why dont we divide the states into few areas and set the team borders... maybe selangor can be divided into 3 areas... north, central and south and each area will have one team and pahang will have 5 teams or sarawak will have also 5 teams and these 'brothers' will compete against each other to be the best in the state and who can provide more stars in the team... maybe they can have the selangor name at the front but differs in at the back like manchester city and manchester united... they have their borders of who supports the city and who supports the united... so maybe we can have 3 tier league and not like our system now... kind of odd and weird... and we should allow import players... the wrong thing about import players is that we depend too much on them... meaning that they actually have an automatic berth to the first eleven... the right thing is make these imports and locals compete for the eleven spots in the team... coaches do not give an indication that the imports are very important and an automatic spot in the team... yes i agree that all these are very hard to implement and it is much easier said than done but if we do not take serious and extreme measures, our football will have no future... like a saying in malay, 'nak hendak seribu daya, tak hendak seribu dalih'... we can all arguing about this matter for years but it will not change or make our football better... we all see how the current measures implemented by FAM are no use... the association itself is not convincing... the format and decisions always change but still no prove of success... yet we move backwards instead...
what i just discussed here is im not criticising our achievement... i just pointing out things that we should see deeply and improve it... im speaking on behalf of the millions of malaysian supporters out there who really really wish to see that our national football team leaping forward and achieve greater glory... football is our biggest sports and our people really want to see our football go further more than any other sports... i myself really wish that i can attend one of the world cup finals in the stadiums wearing the yellow and black stripes jersey and waving our Jalur Gemilang supporting and chanting for malaysia at least once in my life... i think all malaysian have the same dream as mine... i want to believe that our triumph in laos last night is 'the beginning of a new era in our football' and it is not mere luck by any chance but im not convinced yet... prove it in the next tournament... like our prime minister said, 'janganlah kejayaan yang dicapai itu hanyalah kejayaan bermusim'...
from what i saw last night on live tv, our team is still lacking in almost every aspect... the basic techniques in football such as controlling, passing and shooting looked weak... still like schoolboys... we cant hold the possession more than 5 passes in the enemy territory... the players looked to have very slow reaction when they have the ball... meaning they just looked lost and cant decide what to do with the ball on their feet quickly... they are very slow in movement covering the area and assisting their team mates in defense or offense... their stamina looked quite didnt reach the level that they should be in.. they were exhausted when they reach the hour mark... the synchronization and understanding between players are still poor... the keeper can be good sometimes and sometimes he conceded a weird goal... the defenders were okay but it was only because they confronted by the equally clueless and slow vietnamese strikers... the midfielders didnt dictate the area commandingly and were nowhere to be found when the offense mode was on... and the strikers didnt have that killer instinct in front of the goal... our mental strength is still not that strong yet... yes they maybe can absorb pressure from the opposite supporters but certainly not string enough to handle the pressure on the pitch... our winning goal came from the courtesy of the poor vietnamese defender who scored an own goal...
when will we expand our wings higher and get our country's name up on the map once again? i dont think that we should be satisfied with just conquering the south east asian region... we need to raise up our quality of football and defeat the big guns on the asian stage and then we can eye the world stage... i want to ask each malaysians, dont you sick and tired of supporting other people's team? dont you want to see our nation to be there on the highest stage and be proud to wear the yellow and black stripes outfit and cheer our heads off to support our national team... dont you? we have been there, we have been at the prime position of asian football... we use to be feared by others... we have stepped our feet into the olympic finals in munich... we have clashed head to head with superstars of england in the likes of gary lineker and paul gascoigne... we used to have a name that is recognized by others... allahyarham mokhtar dahari... but now, what happened? our position in the fifa's world ranking has been plummeted in recent years... the results has been a constant yo-yo... and we dont have any star names in our lineups... stars that is recognized as one of a kind talent who can be compared with not to big names like steven gerrard or andrei arshavin but perhaps in the same region who has been constantly highlighted by their fans like bambang pamungkas for indonesia or kiatisuk senamuang for thailand... if we can have a world class player then what a lucky feat for us... because dont you malaysians feel very weird and ashamed that how can a country like us who is politically and economically stable who has all the world class facilities, world class coaches and certainly, a world class host in any events does not have a world class team? japan and south korea who were on par with us in the 70's and 80's now established themselves as the centre power of asian football and won the asian cup few times and appears in the fifa world cup regularly... other neighboring countries such as vietnam and laos who learn how to play football much much more later than us and used to be easy teams are now progressing rapidly catching up with us... based on the recent update of rankings issued on the 16th december 2009, countries such as thailand now is the 15th best team in asia and 105th in the world compared to us 33rd in asia and 160th in the world... they are just next door neighbor but a mountain's apart in terms of achievement... even indonesia, singapore, vietnam and myanmar are better than us in the rankings... our much so-called professional super league is categorized by asian football confederation (afc) as D-grade compared to indonesian and singaporean league in B-grade and thai league in C-grade... adding to the embarrassment, iraq, a country which is devastated by war and almost everything is destroyed during the war with the US, came to asian cup tournament 2007 in malaysian soil with almost nothing... they didnt have stadiums or gyms for proper training, they didnt have enough players to choose, no proper management and they didnt have enough pair of boots for the games but what happened? they completed one of the most inspiring and heroic stories in football by winning the tournament and become asian champions... by defeating the giants such as australia, south korea and saudi arabia who are all strengthened by their best players, who saw it coming? no one expected iraq to upset all the favorites... but us? we became the only host who failed to bag a single point in the tournament and managed to score only 1 goal but conceded the most of 12 goals in the group stage despite all the proper training in world class facilities and has enough players to choose from...
so what the hell is wrong with our football and who are there to blame? i maybe do not understand well enough what are the source of problems... the physical condition of our players? yes. we maybe small compared to arabs or the europeans but we have speed and agility... the small players always have speed advantage over big players and more agile if the players know how to exploit and train intensely with these advantage.. japanese and korean players have almost the same size as ours but they didnt seem to have much problem with it... i am a footballer myself and i have played with many footballers and saw some of them played too... what i saw is that i believe our malaysian footballers are more skillful and more technical than european footballers... we can dribble better than them... i see that our talents are very promising and our future is bright if we know how to harvest these talents properly... i think some of the problems originate from our own household and this mentality where most parents dont encourage their kids to participate actively in sports let alone to allow their kids to consider sports as their full-time career... i guess this mentality must be erased before we can see any further progress in our sports industry... by saying this, the government also must support in terms of promise a bright future to these athletes because what our parents care about is our future... from my point of view academic is not the only thing that provides a good life... there are some kids who dont do good in academic but have a real talent in sports but the parent insist that academic is the only way for them to survive... so these talents will remain hidden and get rusty over years... it is wrong totally... parents in europe and america send their kids to the academy at the early age of 2 years old for discovering their talent... their universities provide a place in their institution with full scholarships despite their lack of excellence in academic but as long as they have sports talents, so these universities provide them a clear path and help them to be national athlete... so these universities are not only to provide excellence in academic but excellence in sports as well... one thing that i notice is that whenever a football association wants to recruit new players, they advertise a call up for anyone who are interested to attend a trial out at the specific venue such as training ground at the state football complex... so i think instead of demanding these young kids to come down to their place, why dont the association set up a team of scouts and scatter them around the state urban and rural areas to find these hidden talents... all other countries did this... do you think kaka and ronaldinho came to the trials? hell no... it was the talent scouts who discovered them while they playing on the streets... and these scouts must be a real deal scouts who know how to see through these talents and not just somebody who does not know anything on talent scouting... or what we malay use to say it 'serkap jarang' or 'tangkap muat'... our highest association should provide more academies in every state and not just at the capital city... so in order to do that, we must not afraid to invest in hiring world class coaches just to train these youngsters of 2 and 3 years old... it is not necessarily that our senior team that gets to train with a world class coach... we should focus more on these kidlings better than the seniors because the seniors 'dah tak boleh dilentur dah'... and the FAM should collaborate with the ministry of education and try to organize school leagues in large scales in the stage of primary school or even from kindergarten or maybe a junior community league at every neighborhood.. a proper coach should be installed in each of these school.. not the PJ teachers... and these league must be monitored by state coaches... in the government side, they should provide more football grounds and constantly maintain these grounds... give extra budgets on developing the sports... from the corporate sector side, we should let them take over the football clubs from the states... we always hear the stories of players and coaches who didnt receive their salaries and the management are very very poor... too much bureaucracy in the state organization when we let the politician or the royal family to hold power, they have too much other responsibilities already... give it to the people who really know how football works and concentrate 100% in moving the association forward... do it like how our government installed datuk idris jala in order to save MAS from bankruptcy... and his sole purpose is to rebuild and restore MAS to its previous glory... most of the presidents of football association are kings, princes and ministers... they already fully-occupied with their tasks on taking care of the people so why dont give the job to people who can do their job 100% to serve the purpose of developing football... i understand that the corporate sector sees that our football industry is not profitable to them and that is why they tend to invest on buying the popular and profitable clubs such as clubs in the English Premier League and let our league sink deeper... i guess let the private sector owns and operates the clubs whether the owners are from malaysia or foreigners... we will not loose the identity or our pride and patriotism if we invite these foreign investors to buy our clubs... in fact it is for our own good and less a burden to the state governments... why we do not try to adopt these kind of systems to our football development... sometimes i really want to know why we do not take examples from the success nation of football... and our league should not be teams like state teams of selangor and then there are clubs like selangor pkns... so the fans will of course support the state teams and usually an empty stadium for club teams... why dont we divide the states into few areas and set the team borders... maybe selangor can be divided into 3 areas... north, central and south and each area will have one team and pahang will have 5 teams or sarawak will have also 5 teams and these 'brothers' will compete against each other to be the best in the state and who can provide more stars in the team... maybe they can have the selangor name at the front but differs in at the back like manchester city and manchester united... they have their borders of who supports the city and who supports the united... so maybe we can have 3 tier league and not like our system now... kind of odd and weird... and we should allow import players... the wrong thing about import players is that we depend too much on them... meaning that they actually have an automatic berth to the first eleven... the right thing is make these imports and locals compete for the eleven spots in the team... coaches do not give an indication that the imports are very important and an automatic spot in the team... yes i agree that all these are very hard to implement and it is much easier said than done but if we do not take serious and extreme measures, our football will have no future... like a saying in malay, 'nak hendak seribu daya, tak hendak seribu dalih'... we can all arguing about this matter for years but it will not change or make our football better... we all see how the current measures implemented by FAM are no use... the association itself is not convincing... the format and decisions always change but still no prove of success... yet we move backwards instead...
what i just discussed here is im not criticising our achievement... i just pointing out things that we should see deeply and improve it... im speaking on behalf of the millions of malaysian supporters out there who really really wish to see that our national football team leaping forward and achieve greater glory... football is our biggest sports and our people really want to see our football go further more than any other sports... i myself really wish that i can attend one of the world cup finals in the stadiums wearing the yellow and black stripes jersey and waving our Jalur Gemilang supporting and chanting for malaysia at least once in my life... i think all malaysian have the same dream as mine... i want to believe that our triumph in laos last night is 'the beginning of a new era in our football' and it is not mere luck by any chance but im not convinced yet... prove it in the next tournament... like our prime minister said, 'janganlah kejayaan yang dicapai itu hanyalah kejayaan bermusim'...
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