The Malaysian football team’s latest position on the FIFA World Ranking goes almost unnoticed. We stand at 170th out of 205 teams, the same as Timor Leste and higher than Cambodia, Laos and Brunei.
The fact that hardly anybody takes notice shows how the game of the masses, which at one time had such a fanatical following in Malaysia, has fallen.
Much has been written about the decline of Malaysian football and how badly we are doing these days.
Yet, there was a time when the Malaysian football scene and its national team were respected and feared not only by regional teams, but also international ones.
The Malaysian football team was ranked 79 in 1993; the highest ranking in the last 10 years was 123 in 2005.
There was a time when rankings meant little, but Malaysian teams, especially those before the 1990s, played their hearts out for the nation and its people. The best example is that of April 6, 1980, one of the finest moments in Malaysian football.
I recall Sabah’s Hassan Sani “Lipas Kudung” sprinting away with the ball from the Malaysian’s half. He was in the South Korean’s half in a flash and side-stepped two desperate lunging defenders.
At the touchline, he passed to “King” James Wong, who slammed a grounder past the hapless South Korean goalkeeper Kim Hwang-ho and whirled away with his right hand punching the air in delight.
The team included greats like R. Arumugam “Spiderman”, Jamal Nasir, Soh Chin Aun, Santokh Singh, Kamaruddin Abdullah, Bakri Ibni, Shukor Salleh, Khalid Ali and Abdullah Ali.
Coached by German Karl-Heinz Weigang, Malaysia’s talisman, the late Mokhtar Dahari “Supermokh”, was not even in the first eleven.
Malaysia won that match 2-1 and qualified for the 1980 Olympics. The national team never played at the Moscow games after Malaysia boycotted it following the then Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan.
Between 1960s and the early 1990s, the national team had notable achievements, which include the bronze medal at the 1962 and 1974 Asian Games; qualifying for Olympics in 1972 and 1980; AFC Asian Cup winners in 1976/1980 and 2007; four-time SEA Games Gold medal winners in 1961, 1977, 1979, 1989; 10-time winners of Pestabola Merdeka in 1958, 1959, 1960, 1968, 1973, 1974, 1976, 1979, 1986 and 1993; and winners of other regional tournaments such as the King’s Cup.
In the 21st century, there is only the AFF Suzuki Cup win in 2010.
Now, South Korea’s FIFA Ranking is 51st, and has grown leaps and bounds since 1980. Malaysia is 170th, its worst ever.
What happened in the intervening years that our national team stagnated, even declined, while other countries surpassed us?
Years after we went from being amateurs to semi-professional and professional players, the national team seemed to have taken a turn for the worse.
The match-fixing scandal in 1994 did not help. It saw 21 players and coaches sacked, 58 players suspended and 126 players questioned over corruption involving match-fixing.
One wonders where the problem is and how to fix it. Is it the local football league, the huge sum that players are getting, the lack of development programmes at the grassroots, or simply the apathy of all involved?
The thirst among Malaysians for a credible national football team has been growing for more than 30 years. Will it be quenched? That remains to be seen.
The writer is NST’s news editor