The Malaysian football mental block

Malaysian football should be over its tried-and-failed gimmicks of hiring English coaches and adopting English training methods. There seems to be a long-running strain of colonial veneration in the upper echelons of our football association always looking for help from the past masters.

We need to remind ourselves that England last won the World Cup in 1966, haven’t come close since, and are themselves experiencing problems with their grassroots setup; having a league over-run by better foreign players, lack of playing space and starry-eyed youngsters.
We have more than 150 countries ahead of us in the FIFA rankings, yet we keep calling on that one country for help.

As an avid player and observer of the game, I can testify that the players in the national team are the best of our crop technically, which is why coaches and managers change, but the team remains the same. What we have are problems in the mental department, specifically toughness, belief and determination.

What we need to do is send our players to the Ivory Coast, Cameroon, Ghana and all the African nations ranked higher than us to learn these attributes from those who live on a tenth of what we live on. Send them to Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar to learn how they play at our level with the poverty they face. Send them to Brazil, Argentina and South America to discover the real love of the game.

But before that, start with accountability lessons for the upper management. They were in charge of hiring coaches and managers, but just can’t stand taking responsibility for their decisions. The CEO who hires bad managers and employees is accountable when they fail. Ministers are accountable when people under them fail. Change needs to start from the top.