Tuesday, July 03, 2007

Malaysian Football: Still no light at the end of the tunnel

Alright, does anybody care about our local football scene?
Yes I am a self-confessed Manchester United fanatic. But as a quote I once came upon years ago goes something like this, "A true football fan will always support his home tea." Home team meaning your local team." I believe in this. No matter how sh*tty your local team is, its your team, man. While I'm not much of a Sarawak FA fanatic as I am a Devil, I still follow the team. I'm happy when they win, disappointed when they lose. I keep up with the team news. Proud to be Sarawakian.
Okay when I went on NST's site earlier, I found out our National U-20 team was thrashed in their tour of Thailand. That sucks, really. I may have second thoughts being proud of this country at times, but I still support our national team. Anyways, as i read on, I came across a statement by the FAM Deputy President himself, the son of the Sultan of Pahang, regarding those thrashings.
The squad, coached by FA of Malaysia technical director Robert Alberts, was thrashed 8-0 and 5-0 respectively by Osotspa FC and Thailand International University in a playing tour of Thailand and the FAM is shocked.
FAM deputy president Tengku Abdullah Sultan Ahmad Shah said: "I am shocked and Robert should be held resposible for these defeats."
I sympathize with Coach Alberts. But this isn't surprising. Nothing new. This is FAM. Always looking for a scapegoat. Always looking for someone to blame. Everytime the National team fails, it is the coach that gets the stick. Even more if the coach was a foreigner. Then they'll say local coaches can do as good if not better than foreign coaches. But then the pressure on foreign coaches are always higher and to some extent unreasonable. Just like feminists :p.
And if you are in the FAM hierarchy, you automatically get the privillege of blaming others when the National team screws up, the coach being the most convenient, heck you could probably even blame the FAM bus driver who drives the team bus. And the only people that would not be blamed is you and your fellow administrators and big wigs. The Secretary General, the Vice President and the President. Nobody blames them. Which is just understandable. How could the coach issue a press statement blaming the President? He'll definitely be given the boot.
FAM has been amusing and annoying Malaysians football fans for a long long time. It is a joke. A body that is run by clowns and jokers. Amateurs. In fact they should change their name from Football Association of Malaysia to Forever Amateur Management. Unless a complete overhaul of the leadership & administration happens, we'd be in the tunnel for a long run.

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