We just beat an official South Korea FA U-23 side and you decide not to cheer?

Dude..Thats the best as local football can get... if you cannot be happy with that, you cannot be happy with anything....

Some people just need to get things in perspective..In football. age is just a number. By the age of 20 the likes of Rooney, Ronaldo and Messi already conquered the world. How do you explain that?

If you actually went to the match you will see the Koreans already have a bigger physique and mature football mind than us. So what actually on field advantage that 2 year difference bring us for you to discredit the win?

What i know, the FA, the coach and the players have the responsibilities to hold the countries honour with each national team the sent out. So if they thought their team good enough to win comfortably vs our lowly side, yet still lose, so who to blame?


Our team can only beat whats in front of us and its not our fault if South Korean sent a weak team and get beat. Teach them a lesson to send a stronger team next time.

pre-match, nobody realistically expected more from our boys except to lose with some sort of dignity.

F**K that. They go on to win win the whole damn thing.

The record books will say Malaysia U23 defeated South Korea U23 so our boys have done their job. You cannot possibly expected more from them can you?

Congrats to Ultra Malaya team as well. The first time i saw you guys at vs Kenya at Shah Alam, you just a bunch of 8-9 college students jumping around.

Look how you have grown in numbers by each matches. Show to these people that there are thing you can contribute to our football instead off merely " wait and see then criticise" attitude.

Its also not fair to put the blame of Malaysia football's decades of stagnation to this group of players and discredit their effort. Players from shambolic football environment need to dig deeper to beat players from rich and developed football nation like S. Korea and that they did. Our players have no other ammunition to attack the Korean with but grit and tactical discipline but they knew that, however strong our opponent is, if they hold on to those two, sooner or later chance will open up and anything can happen.

i don't have the intention to change your perception of Malaysian football as a whole. You skeptics keep moving the goal post so its impossible to do that, unless maybe if we beat Spain 5-0 in the world cup final. Even then some smart ass will discredit the win because Spain used a 20 year old Barcelona reserve instead of Fernando Torres. Its annoying that you just keep highlighting the negatives while conveniently leaving out the positives.

i just like to specifically discuss how our lowly national U-23 side beat the mighty South Korea.

i can take it if people criticize our team when they fail to deliver. But it get on my nerves that people discredit the team when they do good.

Win wrong. Draw also wrong. Kalah apatah lagi.. what you guys want really?

Give credit when credit is due please.




i have been following this team for over a year now and i can assure you that this level of performance shown during Korea match is very consistent for this side since Coach Rajagopal took over. Beside the two 3-1 loses to Uzbekistan in the Asia Cup Qualifying, not many team find it easy to beat us. And those teams include Saudi Arabia, Jordan, China (the same china team that wipe us 5-0 in the asian cup can only manage a 0-0 now), Manchester United and now South Korea.
this result is projected in the FIFA ranking where we rose from #161 in April 2009 to the current position of #142 for June 2010. That 19 place position shift ranks Malaysia among TOP 10 BEST MOVERS among Asia countries in the same period.

if you just cannot see this statistic as sign of improvement and consistency, then you just have to simply admit that you are prejudiced and biased towards your own country and cannot treat their performance objectively like you would to other nations.



Both team fully aware that it was a match between U-23 vs U-23 so the issue of age advantage shouldn't have come up. The Korean used average player aged 21 because they want to pool 21 year old players eligible for the Olympic that is still 2 years away. For youth teams below 21 years, the older team have the advantage over younger teams because they have bigger physique but for teams over 21 i think age different of 2 years is nothing at all.



Make no mistake. The Korean players that turn up were better than our players. The have the close control. The passing skill. Tactical awareness and composure developed through proper development since the young age.. That is what i call as having a more mature football mind

i just like to discuss performance vs Korea for now. Discussion regarding performance for other matches in other period of times does not interest me at the moment and can take place in other discussions . And i suggest you limit your perspective to matches from July 2009 onwards that is after Rajagopal took over. Then you will have a more clearer and accurate picture of the real strength or weakness of this team.



The decision to use any player of any age against us is made with conscience by the Korea coach and FA with their official country name at stake. Its out of our players or FAM's control at all. So should Korea lose because of the decision they make, they themselves should shoulder the blame. That fact must not be used to discredit our NT and FAM because we have no control whatsoever about that.




Since January 2009, we had friendlies vs Zimbabwe, Manchester United, Kenya, China, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Lesotho, Syria, Yemen, Maldives, Singapore U-23 and now South Korea U-23.

Except for Lesotho, all these team ranked much higher than us in the world ranking. Why do you rate these teams as lesser opponent?

Is it because you have another highly ranked imaginary adopt country like England or Brazil that you treat as your own in football discussion?



OK. Lets hear it. When you hear Malaysia vs South Korea. Whats your real expectation of the boys for the match? You expect our shambolic footballers to wipe the Korean 3-0? Honestly?

Whats the use of you setting a high standard, but when you see sign of improvement like winning against the like of South Korea, you put the team down further instead giving them a pat in the back.

as if you don't want the standard to be met. Because if they do, you will be WRONG.



A competitive match resemblance of that connotation is the story of 2009 Laos Sea Games. But that is different story for another discussion.

Even-though Korea match was a friendly, its still 90 minute of football with a winner or a loser. And when we share the field with the likes of South Korea and come out winners, its still quite an achievement. You yourself complain that we always play friendlies against lesser opponent. But now we played against south Korea and win some more yet you still complain that its only a friendly. That's what i meant when i say you skeptics always move the goalpost. nothing can satisfy you.





That was my tribute to Ultra Malaya. If you went to the stadium for each NT match you can see them in action.

They are a group young people who are fed up with the state of our football. But instead of typical " wait and see" attitude, they decide to do something about it in the only way they can. Based on just a few people, they manage to assemble pockets of national team supporters from all over the country and would show up in force as a hardcore national team fanatic to vocally express their passion for the name of our country during each of national team matches.

i have been to a lot of these matches and can see they grew in numbers by each match. And when you see comment from officials and players how touched and inspired they are with the support you knew you have contribute something instead of just criticizing and being passive. if we WANT it, we also must do our part about it. Thats what i think anyway.

This post has been edited by aressandro10: Jul 28 2010, 11:03 AM

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.



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.




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..



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.



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.



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.



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?”



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.


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.



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.



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.




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.




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.



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.



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.




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”.



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.



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.



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 pmA 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

it seem as if that next round of matches will be tougher for the boys..

Fans do what fans do. But the positives sometimes do sound amplified because most of the time we have to push against non rationale, misconcepted, ignorant, prejudiced, biased and not entirely fair tides of negativity. But when we are not in that situation, we Malaysian NT fans are mostly a modest lot. It will not be easy for us to forget the pain of being where we are and where we had been.


Define “such results consistenly” in a measurable manner and put it in documentation. You might need to refer to it one day


Friendlies are firendlies and tournaments are tournaments. There are no needs to compare those 2. Most half educated football fans knew how to differentiate them. Just that, in international stage, especially Malaysia, competitive tournaments is hard to come by. The last we have was the SEA Games in December 2009 and the next we can expect is 2010 Asia Games in November 2010. So the friendlies in between do hold a much higher stake compare to normal club football friendlies. For the players, it could mean weather they are in the next team or not, so they have to take it competitively.


If that statement applies to Malaysia vs Korea, thank you, at least, for acknowledging that.


Some of those matches are World Cup Qualifiers, Asia Cup Qualifiers and Rank A international friendlies. So there are bound to field their best team. But we cannot force them to. Even in World Cup finals some team don’t field their best eleven but still the official name of the country at stake and normal rules apply. We cannot control that. We can only beat what’s in from of us.


I don’t really know what they have done behind the scenes. All I know most of them trained with FAM/SSBJ and kept together very early since U-19. It was very late before they are released to the states. I think they receive a much better diet, technical, tactical and physical preparation compare to state trained President Cup players as the seemed more matured on the pitch. That’s why FAM resists the pressure to disband Harimau Muda A from state team who want to poach these players. If the players release to the states, they will be gone to the dogs, surely.


And your realistic expectation is…..?


Oh really. I thought Wayne Rooney turned pink because he was irritated with himself for not being able to break those tree-house-living -poor-excuse-of-a-footballer Mongolian defenders.


No problem. If you are in my position you would be doing the same too


Football supporters in Malaysia are in an identity crisis. If you don’t have a sense of belonging, no amount of marketing can bring you to the stadiums and attract sponsors. Better save whatever extra penny and cents they have to further develop those selected group of players in the U23 and Harimau Muda A squad. Eyes and heart can only be opened when we rise up the World Rankings and performed in tournaments.


No.

If we are complaining about the brain drain, politics, youth development, FAM should do this and do that, I‘ll save us the time and just agree with you.

Most of our opinion are unanimous about our/FAM general weaknesses. It’s just most of the time, it is not fairly and fact fully presented in discussion which I personally don’t like.


That’s fair. But for my part, I can only focus on posts that you quote me. And, generally, by “you” I don’t mean Mr. Duke Red, but all Malaysian Football antagonists in general.


From what I know, FAM does not make public their targets for the team anymore these days. They learned their lessons that when they state their target, they and the team will be ridiculed either way. But generally, they expect the team to WIN whatever task they are given.


Yes. I also have high hopes that development in Kelantan will trigger uprising in other states as well. No self respecting west coast northerners or klang valley city boys should just stand and see these budu-eating-east-coast-barbarians filling up their stadiums for them.


I do. I have no choice really.

I have to admit, i do enjoy watching the quality of imported football broadcastings. But like a good movie, that I would pay for a good plot and narrative, by the end of the movie, even by how good and dashing Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie is, added with multimillion dollar CGI, it is still fake and no attachment to me in reality.

They just cannot beat the adrenaline rush I have when watching the team that represent me, life in the stadium.


No. You win. Because you know people and information that I don’t.



My statements are based on current situation. I knew of the case of 1994 but I take it after the hard pressed action we took, they are not prevalent anymore. But with billions of dollars changing hand in world football betting ring each day, we cannot be sure. Even EPL is not totally safe from that issue.

About your stories that you shared, how do I go about searching for them? Would like to know how bad it was.


I never said I better than you. I just had doubt you would have total grasp of my side of the opinion.


Unless you have childhood friends from Liverpool city in England and understand whatever that is coming out of Jamie Carragher’s mouth, I don’t think you understand totally what I meant.

Tell me something. IF, hypothetically, due to their unmanageable debt and financial irregularities, Liverpool FC had to made solvent and need to restart back down at the bottom pit of English League. They lose a whole generation of talented footballers, no longer blessed with millions of sponsorship money and had to fight with Premier League teams for fans and cable viewership. Bear in mind that this is due to their own doings.
Would you still support them then, or would you withhold your support until they return to the Premier League?


The fact that this discussion need to be discussed in "Real World Issues" forum means that it is already out of FAM or FIFA’s hand. No football industry can flourish in a land where people don’t have a sense of pride towards their identity and community.

This post has been edited by aressandro10: Aug 6 2010, 03:56 PM

That’s not too far away from my low expectations after all. Waiting nervously to see how they perform in the Asian Games and AFF Cup. My hope is at least the semifinals of AFF so that I can support them at the stadium on the home leg. Looking at our opponents around the region, this, of course, is not granted, but anything less than that would be a failure.

Can we? really?

If only we can simply fill in whatever fantasy opponents’ name, time and venue and the match will indubitably materialized. But with our ranking around +/- 140th right now it’s not as simple as that.

I don’t see why higher ranked teams would want to play us except to milk huge appearance fees or maybe to fish some votes like when we still have some power in the AFC which now we have not.

The thing about good timing is not always available every time. So from time to time we have to make do with what we have as long as there are matches for the boys to play. I can see FAM is trying their level best to be selective regarding our recently. Very rarely in the past 2 years we play against weak national teams. In fact, they may have been too selective that actual rank A matches getting fewer and further in between. The Korea game and coming September friendly vs Oman in Doha are welcomed relieve for us NT fans after a long drought of matches.

Yes. I also have beef with state side training method as well. It’s a well known fact that for each national call up , the coaches have to spend some time to build up the player’s fitness which leave little room for tactical training. That’s why you might have heard in the news that FAM and KBS want to keep the U-23 and HM A throughout but as you said, due to income issues that might not be possible.

In my eye this crop of youngsters already turning out differently than those before them so would rather go with the upward flow than waiting for them to fail.

its true. I have this feeling that even if our NT reached the world cup, we can still find some people withheld support for our NT. Public supporting our geographic roots and identity is somewhat taboo or not in trend these days. Without that any football club, state or NT will be rendered useless economically.

Vietnam, Indonesia or Myanmar’s NT performance is not that far ahead of us if we compare to Korea, Japan and China like we always do. Nor do their National FA is far more competent or less “corrupt” than us. PSSI’s current president has been jailed 14 months for corruption yet still holds the post.

Yet whenever their NT plays in Gelora Bung Karno’s stadium, you can always expect above capacity crowds all proudly jumping and singing their support to their team. So little gap but so much difference compare to our NT support in Bukit Jalil.

I think football or FAM is not the only problem. The issue also lies with the fans themselves who want to detached themselves from who they are. Any kind of aggressive marketing strategy will only thickens their defensive wall, wasting time and money.

These glory hunters will only response when we win something and that what we should focus on.

I truly highly wish so.

Yes. We do have issues about the lack Chinese football players these days. But the same issues don’t apply to Indians. In fact they are a very strong pillar supporting our football. A lot of good coaches are Indians including our NT coach K. Rajagopal and his predecessor B. Sathianathan who now Kelantan’s star coach. Selangor’s league winning team is coached by K. Devan. I think in every MSL team have Indians playing important role in the team. K. Gurusamy for example is the captain of Harimau Muda A team.

My, admittedly generalized, speculation is this happens because Indians are not a complicated lot and not adhere to other issues that somewhat hinders Chinese participation in the industry. If you want and good enough to play, what is stopping you? Just do it and break whatever obstacle in the way.

I think blaming everything on FAM is “just too easy” and “lazy”. We should be more specific. Grassroots development, for instance, is under State FA’s portfolio but FAM is receiving bulk of the blame for it.

Race unbalance happens in every industry but FAM I think should be impartial regarding this matter. Questions should be directly imposed to Malaysian Chinese Football Association on what is their effort to further promote professional football among their members.

i don’t have a single ounce of marketing talent in me. That’s probably explained why, before I criticize them, I cannot come out with a good way to market this shit on my own. To me marketing is just a tool. A guide. They are not the true pulling factor.
So, in your opinion, what kind of marketing strategy that can work as a pulling factor for our football? What would you do differently?
Thats disappointing. I was hoping for exclusive real live quotation from a real acquaintance of yours. Beside, you assumption that our football is full of corruption is based on current situation or pre-94?

This is football supporting is all about. As our football players need to learn how European players play, local football fans must also learn from European football fans how they support their team.

Sure, they will curse everyone from the chairman down if the football is not up to mark, but leaving their team behind is never an option.
You have come across like someone who really meant that. So I will give you the benefit of the doubt and trust you.
Pity, that when you make the choice to support the likes of Arsenal, Manchester United , Liverpool or Chelsea these days there are little possibility for you to actually prove that loyalty in real situation. A mere 20 years without trophy is nothing compare to the pain of relegation or even worse disintegration and rebuilding.

When you find yourself still supporting the club at it’s true low point, like the fans of Nottingham Forest, Juventus or Fiorentina did, will you feel the pride of being a true fan.

its not really about me now is it. We, local football fans, will always park our ass at the stadium whenever possible. But our numbers is not many. The “ bigger picture” is about turning the likes of you to the stadium. The disconnection that you feel applies to a whole lot of people as well. And to do that reconnection is a really mountainous task put upon FAM which is rarely appreciated and taken for granted.

This post has been edited by aressandro10: Aug 26 2010, 02:38 PM

i think the best we can hope from this tournament is a 'good-ish' performance vs kyrgyzstan.

Personally, the earlier we get out from these games with less injuries the better... players need to rejuvenate and re-motivate themselves for AFF Cup just a month away which is more important.

Kyrgyzstan propably thinking the same thing


A win vs Kyrgyzstan is a must... and it must be a big scoring one as well to off set the mauling we can expect from Japan and the host team.
To qualify through the best 4 of the third place, goall difference will be a key factor....

With Iraq pulling out and replaced by Pakistan, Group F also turned into a very balanced group which will be a factorin the race for the best 3rd place.

Anxious for tonight.... hope Selangor and Kelantan will turn on a show as good as the last time they meet in Shah Alam.

AS it turned out, they did not... a tight draw... tired i guess.... have to switch to the terrace for entertainment instead...

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Added on October 13, 2010, 9:47 am

RIP to one Che Karma Sulaiman, 39, a Kelantan fan from Bachok who died last night due to breathing difficulties.



http://www.utusan.com.my/utusan/info.asp?y...an&pg=mh_05.htm

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Added on October 14, 2010, 9:25 amAnother interesting info from our brother from indonesia. This is what i call true football supporting. Not just football watching that can merely do through a tv. The preparation of going to a football match is like going to a war. i admire their culture.



This post has been edited by aressandro10: Oct 14 2010, 09:25 AM

After 6 winless match versus Kedah, kelantan need something special to send them to Bukit Jalil ....





This post has been edited by aressandro10: Oct 25 2010, 05:57 PM

oh well... kalu tgk lama2.. makan jugak... tapi aku nak beli yang ade logo FAM.. lagi cun aku rase.. kalau aderla..

my target for the national team for the Asian Games is...

for them not to add anymore to the injury list for the AFF cup....


:sigh: for us to make a dent in Japan and China's armour, we must at least have our full squadron fit and their form fine tuned to to peak at the tournaments for us even to stand a chance...

right now RG can only name a mere 9 players out of the Sea Games gold medal squad where the competition will be a lot more tougher..

This post has been edited by aressandro10: Nov 6 2010, 02:54 PM

4.00 pm ... Guangzhou time same with Malaysia time..

no need to aply leave from your day job though.. there are no live on tv...

but you can prefilled that leave form for 10 nov for the bumper match .. Malaysia vs Jepun..

our theme in these games is win big vs Krgystan and damage limitation vs the rest..

This post has been edited by aressandro10: Nov 7 2010, 01:39 PM

manage to seal the deal in the warm-up-ish match... though the rather hopeful 4-0 scoreline never materalized...


next match is the real deal.. japan is whipping the host 3-0 now... makin gthem like schoolboys..

i wonder when is the last time we had a win in Asian Games though ....

must be more recent than that..in 1974, we won bronze in tehran...

No qualifying. all 46 AFC affiliates who wish to participate can just apply. they sorted it out from there.

Group A standing.

Team.........Pld W D L GF GA GD Pts
Japan ....... 1 1 0 0 3 0 +3 3
Malaysia ....1 1 0 0 2 1 +1 3
Kyrgyzstan.1 0 0 1 1 2 −1 0
China PR ...1 0 0 1 0 3 −3 0

This post has been edited by aressandro10: Nov 8 2010, 10:38 PM

Actual table that determine wether we qualify or not... 3 rd place table.. we are expected to enter this table tomorrow after the match versus Japan...




This post has been edited by aressandro10: Nov 9 2010, 06:06 PM

our performance is not far from expectation... anyone expecting for us to get anything from the japanese is delusional... they just non-chalantly beaten the host 3-0 in the first round...