The assessment was based on 10 aspects… organisation, technical standards, attendance, governance, marketing and promotion, business scale, match organisation, media, stadiums and clubs. Of the 21 countries (assessed), Malaysia were ranked 18th. [Thestar]

Seems like Malaysian football is sinking deeper and deeper into nowhere. Set the standard of players aside, I can understand that we simply lack the football talent to succeed at the highest level… but what’s the excuse for Malaysia to be disqualified from the competition?

The standard of our football teams is just one of the criteria, the rest are mostly organisational standards. Our footballing bodies from FAM at the top to clubs management at the bottom level should take the blame for this issue. After millions of dollars being spent into the sport, this is certainly not something that Malaysians are hoping for.

Well, pointing fingers is meaningless now… what we need is to find solutions in rebuilding our local league and improving our standard, but FAM clearly have no solid plans that are executable at the moment. Lots of their programs are ad-hoc and not aiming for any long term revival.

From the current development, the future of Malaysian football is not looking good at all.

The parodied FAM logo

During the Sportscenter Asia broadcast on Wednesday, ESPN showed a parodied-logo instead of the official FAM logo.

It’s reported by Utusan that the staff from Sportscenter Asia had searched for the logo online and had mistaken that as the official logo.

I couldn’t stop laughing when I saw the ‘logo’ on Jeffrey’s website… how on earth could the ESPN staff mistaken this as the official logo? The parodi-ness is blatantly obvious.

FAM website under construction &
Malaysia web development

FAM website has been under construction for quite some time, and the ESPN staff obviously couldn’t get the logo from an official source. The website would only be back by March 1 according to Azzuddin.

It is a shame that FAM’s website has to be taken down for weeks for reconstruction. This actually exposed a serious issue on how incompetence some web development companies in Malaysia are and how some Malaysian websites are poorly managed.

I don’t count myself as an IT expert, but if I were to handle the FAM’s website reconstruction, the website shouldn’t be down for more than 2 hours; worst case scenario… 48 max. All the contents building and testing should have been done without taking down the site.

I don’t want to bore you with the technicalities… another prime example of poor website management can be seen from the Parliament official website where Chua Soi Lek is still listed as our health minister despite resigning for almost 2 months following his sex scandal.

Tengku Abdullah did not give any reason for his resignation; Bernama thinks that his decision to quit from all posts in FAM is seen as his reaction to fulfil the requests of football fans that the present FAM leadership make way for new blood who could bring changes to the local football scene. [Bernama]

I actually think that Tengku Abdullah should resign much earlier; his reign at FAM was not working well obviously. I don’t really blame him though… he is not solely responsible for the slump of our nation football. In fact his apology to the fans on Wednesday after the China defeat has earned some respect from me.

The troubling thing with Malaysian football these days is that nobody has a real clue on what is happening and what can be done to turn back the tide. The fans and critics could only slam the players and the management for the poor performances, but nobody seems capable to come out with a solid plan to revitalise Malaysian soccer.

I can only hope that a real capable person with the right vision and capability will take over Tengku Abdullah’s position.