About 2 weeks ago, a young passionate supporter of KeADILan requested me to blog about football. He said young people care more for football than politics.
He urged me to organize a group of KeADILan members to go to watch the Asian Cup matches.
“This is to show that KeADILan is with the young people,” he said.
I thanks the enthusiasm of this young friend.
In fact, I have not watched any match for some years now. Watching football matches was indeed a privilege during my free time in Kem Tahanan Kamunting. I must confess: I play sport very poorly, and my Kemta colleagues can testify that.
Despite not knowing much, I am sad with the present state of sport in our country. It must have been an enormous disappointment to all Malaysian young football fans who watched our national team suffered repeated humiliating defeats.
FAM is now having a crisis. After its deputy president Tengku Abdullah resigned, Khairi Jamaluddin also announced quiting (I wonder why should he get into FAM in the first place?). However FAM president Sultan Ahmad Shah vowed to continue and to overhaul the organization.
Evidently Malaysian sport has been overly politicized, it happens not only in football. I need not repeat what others had said on this.
The problem is a question of priority. The government rather spends hundreds of millions on mega-projects but limited resources allocated for the development of sports. Youth and Sports Minister Azalina prefers to build a multi-million sport complex in London, but cannot even maintain decent football fields in Metro KL.
There are also many football fields, playgrounds, parks, etc. have been seized by greedy developers. Children and youth are deprived of recreation space for sport activities.
In many countries, sport is an instrument to forge national unity. Unfortunately, there are no serious and concerted efforts on the part of the government to promote sports to break down ethnic barriers.
I noticed in Brazil and other Latin America, football is a national game. The pastime is also the melting pot for youngsters of diverse ethnic and social backgrounds. Playing football can even help kids in the slum areas to develop a sense of pride and self-respect.
Malaysia used to be one of Asian formidable powers in football. The current scenario of our football is more or less like the economy. South Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong and Taiwan were at the same footing as Malaysia about 3 decades ago. Now all these economies have surpassed us by many folds.
Last year, even the crisis-ridden Burma won the Merdeka Cup. This year, again we witness the total defeat of Malaysian team in the Asian Cup. This may be a signal for waking up. If our political impasse continues, more countries will soon outmatch us in the competition of football, and the economy.
Hear! Hear! Instead of making it compulsory to have playing fields in housing estate, the govt. has allowed greedy developer to gooble up all the available land resulting in no facilities whereby the residents can have a place for rest and recreation. Unlike Malaysia, Australia and in particular Melbourne have made it compulsory to have plenty of parks and playing fields so that sporting endeavour can be pursuit by anyone who wants to. To have a healthy body is also to have a sound mind.
On the 16th of July 2007 it was reported in the NST (Malaysia) that the Education Minister Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Hussein did not approve of a proposal which was presented by the Anti-Corruption Agency to introduce a subject on anti-corruption in schools. His arguement is that the timetable is tight.
Just 3 days after that it was reported in the Star that, he pledged to develop football in school so that Malaysia’s ranking in sports improves. He is preparing a paper on how football can be introduced from primary to secondary school.
I thought 3 days ago he argued that the timetable is tight.
Lim Teong Kim was reported to have said: “……We do not have enough/proper sports infra-structures “. I say even with the latter we would not be able to attain the standard of the 50s-70s because we are not tapping the talents available from our diverse race make-up. Now the team is made up of majority Malays with one or two ‘red’ Indians. Where are the Eurasian, Punjabis, Chinese..etc? It is said the strength of one nation is its human resource yet we are not maximinzing on this. You know why? We have allowed askewed politics to hijack our nation’s interest/glory. Unless we change the status quo will plague us.
they don’t want our young generations know what the heck is going on with the politicians especially in BN.
In a country where a handful of politician championing their own courses, it’s not surprise to learn that these politicians are involved in the football club/association. Some may use it as a stepping stone to grab some headlines and score some browny points over the weaker ones.
It’s a general neglect of the authorities in power to result in the present sorry state of affair…….land grab by developers (of course with the ‘insiders’ help), politicians’ involvement in charity, clubs,etc etc for motives beyond comprehension.
Some drastic measures are needed to turn the tides around….it’s long long overdue!!!!!