QUOTE(Duke Red @ Jul 28 2010, 11:43 AM)
The fact that we had little else to offer but grit and determination is on one hand a positive, because too often I've seen our players look lost and disheartened whenever they have gone behind. I'll be the first to admit that the last time I followed local football, we were semi-pro but the quality of the league was still much better than it is today, after we've turned professional. Like I said earlier, it's good that the lads have fire in their bellies but at the same time, it's a matter of concern that we have fallen behind in terms of player development when our local league has been around for decades now.
No argument. I share your concern about player development at our local league. They should at least should replicate what FAM has been doing at SS Bukit Jalil to the stateside nationwide.
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Grit and determination will give you an edge over similar quality opposition but your state of mind is fragile. In the Premiership it isn't uncommon to see newly promoted sides like Hull, Reading or Wigan surprise many by scaling dizzying heights simply because they are pumped. Sooner or later though, the old adage applies. "Form is temporary, class is permanent". Instead of getting ahead of ourselves, thinking we've achieved something, we should focus on closing the gap in standards even more.
You should give clear definition what you mean by "getting ahead of ourselves" as I never come across the players and officials give any statement stating by winning that match we have won the Asian Cup or anything in that nature. Most statements that came out in the papers the next day indicate the players and coaching staff express the win was a big boost but stress that they know they must still work hard for future challenge. Everyone is focus to close the gap even more. They just need indications like this match to confirm the progress.
I also think that if the fans express their happiness when our national team manage to win vs one of Asia's football superpowers, it doesn't mean we are getting ahead of ourselves. We just simply were being happy. When Burnley beat Manchester United in their early promotion to the EPL, can their fans not celebrate simply because the "bigger picture" is they would still be struggling with relegation the whole season? If that is so, then screw the bigger picture. I'll celebrate when my team wins against big teams or small teams. Heck. I’ll even support them when they lose.
YESTERDAY is already in the past and TOMORROW we still don’t know. If we don’t appreciate and celebrate the little thing that happens TODAY, such as when our minnow of an NT beat some Asian giants, we will see our live passing by without registering anything worth remembering.
I think we had achieved what we expect from a friendly that day. The purpose of the friendly was to test and/or strengthen tactical execution and improve player understanding against quality opponents ahead of the more important assignments at the end of this year which is Asian Games in November and more importantly the AFF Cup in December. I think, by the result and performance, the team did well. But the blunt strike force is still an issue.
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Why do you say I've moved the goalpost? In each and everyone of my posts, I've always cited why I think Malaysian football is in the state it is now. Has anything changed? Nope, or at least, not yet. Hence, my views remain the same.
I think you have move the goalpost on 2 points.
1. You stressed the importance of having competitive friendlies. But when I explained how our boys performed well in a competitive friendly versus S. Korea, you suddenly moved the goalpost by implying that friendlies in this case are not important at all.
2. About the quality of friendly opponent. First you complained that we mostly had friendly versus inferior opponents but when I indicate that most of our friendly opponents for the past year were in fact ranked higher than us in FIFA World Ranking, you moved the goalpost saying that despite the world ranking, they are still not good enough for us. By which international standard or ranking I still don’t know..
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Why do I not focus on the positives? Because the negatives far outweigh them and after years of complacency, it's time to stop taking such results for granted. I find it equally annoying that small victories are celebrated with such gusto because it takes much more to earn back the respect they've lost. These days, supporters go all ape when we beat Singapore or Indonesia. I reckon it's because these countries are our neighbours, not because we beat great sides.
Even though far outweigh by the negative, it doesn’t mean the positives doesn’t exist at all. The state of the national league is still abysmal but positive improvement can be seen in recent development of the national team. And I don’t see any harm in celebrating small victories. Wars are won by winning small battles. By each battle won, big or small, the closer we are towards our target. As long as we don’t lose focus on the big target, it’s actually good to acknowledge and celebrate each small target met so that we can be inspired to build on it. IF we only look at "the big picture" or "the long road ahead" without breaking them into small targets, we can be overawed by the burden of the task and our legs will feel too heavy to even take one small step.
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Lower your expectations if you so wish but my benchmark is the team that used to strike fear in not only our South East Asian counterparts, but our Asian counterparts. Respect is not given, it is earned.
If you ask me what is my aim for the National Team? I would say I would be satisfied if we can already lead the South East Asian region and constantly qualifying to the Asia Cup while competitively knocking on the door of the World Cup. That’s already more than what Thailand did during their decade of dominance of the region. I left room for anything above that for the team to surprise me.
As for my expectations in matches, I use latest FIFA World Ranking which set us at #142th. I see 10 teams above and below us as our equals. I would be pissed if we lose against teams ranked below that and would say the boys did a good job if we won against team ranked above that.
I think that is a fair and updated method to set expectations of the NT performance as compare to your method of just based on if you knew the opponent country play football or not and then subjectively refer to how our forefathers fare ages ago.
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Again, nothing has changed in how football is run. Will this U-23 side go on to become world beaters or will they succumb to the same greed, corruption and politics that ravaged those before them? Why am I not elated? It's because if history is anything to go by, the latter seems the most likely.
The purpose of the match was not to change how the football is run. That statement is not relevant to my statement at all.
Will this U-23 side to become world beaters? I don’t think the hardest of national teams supporters will bet theirs house on that. No. They won’t.
But that is not their mission in the first place. Their mission is to conquer South East Asian football and infiltrate the higher ranks of Asian football and set benchmarks for other generations to beat. By winning gold in SEA Games and some positive result in friendlies versus AFC upper tier teams, I think they are on the right track.
Will they crumble and die later on like other U-23 sides? Well I cannot see the future so they probably will or they probably won’t. But the signs are positive for this team as compare to previous U-23 sides and I am the type of person who like to believe and pray for good things to happen instead of pre-emptively dismissed them as a definite failure without even a whim of a look to what they had achieved.
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Touche. It irks me when people fail to see the bigger picture.
I am quite confident that, big or small, I have a good picture of our football. In our case, I think looking for positive signs to build on and share it with the people, is much better for our NT's development compare to asking rhetoric questions like “When we are going to win the world cup?”
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Forget Manchester United. Premiership clubs come here looking to sell jerseys and increase TV revenue. They aren't here to win. England once came here and won 4-2 with Gary Lineker bagging 4 and Matlan Marjan scoring 2. Suddenly, there was all this optimism and what happened? The result was deceptive. England were jetlagged and playing at half pace. We went on to continue to struggle when it mattered, during competitive tournaments, struggling against the mighty likes of Philipines, Laos and Singapore. Ok so we're not harder to beat but let's not pat ourselves on the back just yet. We have a bad habit of being complacent.
Well. Arsenal, Beckham's Man U, Chelsea and Brazil doesn’t need to fall back to that EXCUSE when they resoundingly beat us on previous visits. Why these Man U team need a last minute poacher's goal to beat a team whose whole team collective annual salary is just a portion of their one day operating cost? Could it be because that particular Man U team was inferior to the other exhibition teams, OR maybe because this Malaysia team is better than the previous Malaysia teams...I would like to think it was because of the latter.
And this time, it was different to Matlan Marjan’s false dawns as you doomsayers would like to preach. They built on that MU performance in July to go on to win the Laos SEA Games in December which include a torturous 10-minutes-life-or-death-come-from-behind-win to knock out 8 times defending champions Thailand, a nerve-wrecking semi-final win against fanatical home support, and a final win versus Vietnam to win the country our first football gold in 20 years.
Now..before you go on to downplay the win and the tournament, please understand that SEA Games Football hold a certain prestige and celebrated all around the region. For the final match, Vientiane was outrun by Vietnamese fans in anticipation of the final that you could mistake it for a Vietnamese outpost town. If you failed to even acknowledge that, than no use talking about the Malaysian, South East Asian or maybe Asian Football and stay in your European football safe zone.
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That's my point though. We won through grit and determination like you said but having better ability gives you better results. We should be focusing on developing players so they have the same ability. This is why I brought up the issue of the FAM. With the millions that is being pumped into football each year, what is being done to emulate the success that teams like Korea, Japan and China, who were previously inferior to us have achieved?
Millions that FAM poured into football these days are just peanuts compare to what Korea, Japan and China poured at theirs. With their relatively gigantic economy compare to us, it’s possible for them to make professional sports as a lucrative and attractive career. Support from national mega corporations also gave them the muscle to put out a proper youth development, proper trainings, sport science, coaching and all.
Money influences everything. Start from the end on DUNHILL's 30m/year sponsorship, days when we were superior to the like of Japan, Korea and China was numbered. With player’s paycheck and EPF contributions at stake, the first thing the state FAs had to cut off was youth development. Then our talent supply chain bottle neck was further strangled lifeless by cynical parents who persuade their talented children out of football. I estimated that for each pro footballer in Malaysia, there are 4 better players than him who decide to do something else. I heard stories that how our NT top striker Zaquan Adha was just a reserve in his school/district teams. The better players who played first team football just disappeared.
Unless we somehow stem this bottleneck issues, result from player’s development will continue to be minimal.
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Since you've been an avid follower, what makes his squad different then? Also, what makes you think they won't go down the same path over U-23 sides have prior to them?
The answer for this question is too big for this discussion. I will answer in separate post when i bother to do so. But out of curiosity, any particular reason why do you think THIS TEAM will not break rank from following the same path as others? Or is it just your negative ASSUMPTION as usual? Treat each team as a unique instead of identical clones.
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Who is blaming Korea? The rest of my reply will be a repetition of what I've already mentioned above.
I AM. Putting inexperienced players against our players was a gross underestimation of our ability and a blunder for their part. But somehow faris21 use it as excuse to play down the result whereas FAM, the coach and the player’s definitely not have any control about it. That’s the point I want to make in my original post that you quote.
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Since we're being honest and serious here, I honestly don't see Kenya, Jordan, Syria, Yemen or the Maldives as good competition.
Bahrain, UAE, Uzbekistan, Syria, Yemen, Jordan, China, Saudi Arabia and South Korea are already 9 out of 16 Asia Cup 2011finalist that we played in the past 2 years. You want us to play all 16 finalist before you satisfied that we have played all the best teams in Asia? Just because you have limited knowledge of Asian Football, it doesn’t mean you can underestimate our opponents. As our focus currently are to improve our standings in South East Asia region and venture further up in Asian Football, these finalist are exactly the teams that we should mingle with. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves here shall we.
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You may choose to be sympathetic of the state of our football but I choose not to, because it is our own doing. If nothing changes in the way football is run, do you seriously expect us to miraculously come out of our football rut? During the days we were semi-pro, we could attract the likes of Tony Cottee, David Roecastle, Chris Kiwomya, and Karel Stromsik to our shores. Since turning pro, prior to banning foreigners, we had to settle for much less. Also, what about the teams we used to attract to the Merdeka tournament I mentioned earlier?
Those import players you mentioned just attracted to our DUNHILL money. Not the quality of our league. When we kiss our cigarette advertisement goodbye, we kissed all those overpaid import players goodbye also.
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You may want to keep this discussion in the perspective of this match alone but the thread title clearly indicates, "Malaysian Football Talks", so I have equal right to look at the bigger pictures.
If that so, then please properly start a new discussion regarding that matter and I sure someone will reply to you. "Malaysia Football Talks" are too big of a topic to just discuss everything in one discussion span. So I made perfectly clear that I am just discussing Malaysia vs Korea match which deserve a big topic of its own. From my first post towards faris21 you can see I am trying to not steer away from that. So when you quote me and try to talk about something else, you took my statement and your statement out of context.
I have done your "bigger picture" discussion in other forums before and I found out that these type of discussion are usually repetitive, boring and filled with single-minded-one-sided "suggestions" that easier to post in free internet forums then done. In the end both parties ended up with mutual sense of helplessness and negativity and the need to find scapegoats crepe up. And we all know who the usual scapegoat is.
Not my cup of tea at the moment.
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I expect our boys to get creamed, but at the same time I don't expect to get all excited over one result and will reserve that for a time when the team achieves something, like qualification for the Olympics. Why? My expectations are higher, and rightly so. Not long ago there were ads calling for fans to flock the stadiums again but it's like I said earlier, you have to pull the fans back and not push them. If the team plays notable opposition and gets positive results, the fans will go without having to be told. It's annoying just like when nationalism is forced upon us during National day.
Did I put the team down? I don't even recall mentioning the team. I was addressing Malaysian football as a whole. The only time I referred to the result was when I warned against getting over excited. If anything, I'm playing the result down.
And you are too easily satisfied which is the reason why we never get these results consistenly. Suddenly we think we are on par with other Asian sides only to falter when playing Vietnam in the SEA games or whatever. Yes yes I get it, even Vietnam is better than us now but that isn't my point.
That’s typical of non-objective critics. When we won vs the South Koreans, they never get all excited about one result. But when we lose against the Maldives, the will conveniently not fail to register it in their "I told you so" talks.
What I want from everyone is, instead of making a vague and subjective expectations that not even have a clear road how to get there, try to set a clear and concrete target for each head on task base on opponents. A complete mauling? Draw?
God forbid, a Win??!!
By how much? Do this concrete target thing on tournaments as well. Group stage for Asian Games in November ? Winning the AFF Cup? Write these down in a piece of paper if you can.
And make an honest review after the game without moving the goalpost. Do they meet your target? It’s just a straight away YES or NO.
So unless by “to get creamed” you meant “winning by more than 1 goal”, that’s a YES for Malaysia vs South Korea.
I leave for you to decide for yourself after how many YES will you came and support our NT.
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Once again, I reiterate my right to focus on the bigger picture. The one thing that will satisfy me is a total revamp of the FAM where politics and blatant corruption is removed from the equation.
This was the last time we achieved notable success:
Then this happened:
The fans didn't just walk away. They were turned away. I used to collect newspaper cutouts each time my team, Selangor were featured but since turning pro, the state of football has turned into a cesspool of greed and corruption. Has any drastic action been taken? Not that I know of, so unless there is, we'll be watching nothing but reruns.
A quick fix for the team playing on that day but how will this address the issues I mentioned earlier? .
There are no one single silver bullet to solve the issues that you mentioned. Even the much taunted “total revamp of FAM” will not cure the disease if we stubbornly DEPEND ON FAM FOR EVERYTHING.
Instead of waiting and seeing for the donkeys to fly, Malaysian football community and fans must self-initiate effort in which way or level they can contribute from ground level up.
This mentioned group of youngsters (Ultra Malaya) is very energetic and passionate, and their best way to contribute is to resonate the same spirit among fellow nation loving peers and express it on the stadium terrace.
Other people have IT skill and money, so they can sponsor and set up Internet Forums and website as a base for local football fans to discuss and share ideas and inspiration.
Some people think they can go and contribute extra further, so they choose to create reality talent shows to scout talents nationwide. Formed their own football club and played in Malaysian Super League. Some think they can do better jobs than the FAM line, so they put their neck of the line and nominate themselves to FAM positions to fix it.
Some people create National Community Leagues. Some send their kids to them.
One Tan Sri from Kelantan, did a total revamp of the state FA which result in improve on field performance, consistently full house home attendance (while helping attendance on away matches as well), bustling e-fans community, effective brand management, attractive sponsorship opportunity (Kelantan jersey is almost a cycling jersey now with all the shirt advertisement), close knit relationship with business community (there are close to 70 vendors producing products under KAFA name which include official café and dedicated radio station). Who would have thought a football product from Kelantan could be the hottest rising brand in Malaysia right now.
All these people do all the things independently without a single pushing from FAM and all with focus on target groups and method which are suitable for their ability. If everyone can chip in like this, then the energy will become synergy and resonates to bigger and better things. With a combination of thousands of these silver bullets, there higher chances for us to solve all the issues you mentioned.
I think the lowest people can do is by simply initiating a football match. At least that will teach our young ones to be a “football player” instead of “football watcher”.
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Well that's where we differ. I believe that passive action is exactly what's needed. Let our domestive league decline to the state the FA has no choice but to fix themselves. If fans go back, all will be peaches and cream again. Nothing will need to be done to address deep underlying issues.
Your idea of repairing a broken house is to plant yourself outside, watch the house collapse, and wait for a random knight in a shining armor to come and build you a new one…
That mentality is not much different to how the current FAM thinks now is it?
Nothing will be done to address deep underlying issues unless you become the knight in shining armor yourselves.
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Some time back China suspended their own Super League to address these issues and since they've been rocked with a similar scandal again, they are looking to take action (http://www.goal.com/en/news/14/asia/2009/11/13/1623139/betting-scandal-could-lead-to-suspension-of-chinese-super-league-). Look at how China has become a football powerhouse in Asia despite these scandals because they take action.
I can understand if you keep rumbling on and on about our player’s ability or poor management. But “corruption” and “betting scandal”?
Unless you knew something that I don’t, I don’t hear fixing matches are that prevalent in our local league. As far as I know, even football bookies are more interested in EPL than our own league. If you really do, don’t be afraid to PM me names and details of the people involved. I will personally report them to SPRM.
We also have been to that same crossroad as China had. We had made that hard decision to ban all the people involved in the scandal for life and leaves us with only second rate players to carry on with the league. We never recover our football standard since. I hope everyone learned from that mistake.
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In summary, I won't take credit away from this result alone but you'll note that I very rarely focus on the game, but on Malaysian football as a whole, which is I believe a component of the thread. Let's see what happens now.
In summary.. I probably overdid my effort in explaining things to you. I doubt you can understand what my intention is.
In my opinion, football supporting is not entirely about football itself. Its definitely not just about football kits, colours or statistics.
Football is just a manifestation, a vent to show and defend our pride towards our community, culture and identity. Those things that separate the Mancs and the Scouse, the Kelantanese from the Selangoreans or the Javanese from the Sundanese. How attached are we to who we are or where we grown up. Like your face, you mother and you country, you cannot choose your football team. You are born with it.
On field performance won’t turn true football supporters away. Clubs like West Ham, Millwall, Portsmouth, Newcastle or Persija Jakarta will have fans singing their heart out on the day of their relegation. For them, no explanation is necessary.
For people who felt ashamed with their origin, their immediate culture, their kampong, state or country, no explanation is possible.
Added on August 4, 2010, 6:53 pmQUOTE(ayanami_tard @ Jul 28 2010, 11:54 AM)
the same thing Gus Hiddink did when he was in charge of ROK squad which brought them to semis in 2002
we need more competitive friendlies.not just against big clubs(though it is welcomed),but also against top asian/european countries as well.Japan,South Korea,China,Iran,and perhaps England and the Netherlands
we need scientific approach to our football as well.we have thousands of them grads in sport science,but i don't see any significant improvement in this area
A match where the Netherlands effortlessly won 4-0 without us even touching the ball does not bring benefit to anybody. it will not happen.
I prefer we choose opponents base on our target area. If we target area in the edge of top 100 in the FIFA ranking then those are the type of teams we should spar with. If we target Asia dominance, then we should set up matches with the Asia Cup finalist regularly.
Its no use preparing against Europe's direct and aerial football when our actual competitive target are against Asia's team from the on-the-ground, lung-busting run high stamina type.
This post has been edited by aressandro10: Aug 4 2010, 06:57 PM 
Aug 4 2010, 12:06 PM
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