Back to Square 1

So losing 5-0 to the UAE is apparently a huge shock to Malaysia. Apparently we were supposed to do better than that. Apparently we expected the players to put up a better fight. Apparently not.





Everything went wrong against the UAE. Or rather everything went according to plan. B. Sathianathan is right, the M-League "is not football". Sure we can have committed players but if they're not good enough what's the point? Then again should anyone really have expected more? As usual the administration is not good enough, organisation is not good enough, structure is not good enough etc etc. In short it was coming. And yet very few seem to have seen it.

When I met Soh Chin Aun, currently national team manager, he said standards were improving. If what he meant by standards was commitment and attitude, then yes he's probably on the money. Anything else though and it's a completely different story. In the video above the fans vent their anger towards the players and administration. Maybe that was crossing the line because at the end of the day, most people agree that this is the fault of the current FAM setup.

It doesn't help that the team is painted in a better light than they should. People get caught up the in the hype when they read about "improving standards" and aims to qualify for the 2018 World Cup and other such nonsensical dreams. Why give us hope instead of the truth? Fans get worked up unnecessarily because they actually believe that we are better than we are. Kaka will move to Man City before Malaysia get involved in any high profile tournaments. There really isn't much to argue when all the facts point to one thing - we are not good enough. Maybe that should be reworded - we are not good AT ALL.

One fan criticised the state of the Malaysian league claiming players were pampered. I'm in full agreement. Players are happy to be winners among themselves and staying well within their own comfort zones. As if that breeds anything good. You only get inflated egos and false belief. Hence you get a national team with greater opinions of themselves than they should. Malaysian fans do have unrealistic expectation of their players but we are no fools. We love our football and we know exactly what's wrong when we see it. From the setup of FAM to the unbelievably low quality of our league, we know it's all pointing in the wrong direction.

No change, no results. Simple as that. Perhaps Sathianathan's attack on local football will shake up things and hopefully bring about change. Then again we get this crisis every single year and nothing new happens. It's a shame because with our infrastructure and facilities we really should be churning out quality footballers. This was meant to be a fairly long rant with me voicing my concerns and frustrations with everything and pinpointing problems but then I realised we suck. That's all there is to Malaysian football. We suck.

We need people like Sathianathan to stick around. People with realistic views and who aren't afraid of venting them. Everything he said was spot on. Hopefully he won't lose his job because of it. We have however lost our pride in the national team a long time ago. Time to give us a reason to get it back.