FAM president Datuk Hamidin Amin talks about his visions for Malaysian football with NSTP Sport’s reporter at the recent AFC awards in Muscat
Question: Do you at times wonder that you are president of FAM?
Answer: Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine that one day I would be helming the national body. Now that I am the president, I will do my best to uplift the standard of Malaysian football.
Maybe, it’s my destiny to be one. I have been president for about four months, but it has been like four years… very challenging but I love the adrenaline rush as football is in my blood.
Q: How long do you see yourself being president?
A: As FAM president, I want to bring success. We have our Road Map F:30 initiative which I am determined to achieve.
My tenure ends in 2021, and after that I will decide whether I will continue.
But it also depends whether the stakeholders and the concerned parties will still support my leadership.
I do not want to think about that at the moment as I am f ocuse d on making sure we improve in all areas pertaining to football administration, professionalism, grassroots and other aspects.
Q: What is the Road Map all about?
A: The Road Map is like a baby to me. It has all my goals and visions for football. I told our executive members that we needed a direction to uplift the sport in Malaysia, and the Road Map, I believe, contains achievable targets.
It is a guide not only for our national senior and youth teams but also to implement good governance across the board in line with Fifa’s requirements. I believe it is important for everyone to have a direction instead of just aiming for the stars without having a proper plan.
We have also launched the Affiliates’ Capacity Enhancement (ACE) Project, designed to build capacity and upgrade our affiliates’ competency in terms of governance, technical and competition development, starting next year.
We do not want to give money to affiliates as they might spend it on other things. Instead, we rather offer services to educate them on football aspects especially when the entire regime of an affiliate changes.
We will monitor them from time to time and see whether they have upgraded in all aspects. Sometimes, when there is a regime change, the new people do not know much about football, so we are here to educate them.
Q: One of the targets in the Road Map is to qualify for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. It seems like an ambitious target, what do you think?
A: We must dream big rather than just targeting the AFF Cup and Sea Games all the time. We must build a solid foundation and develop quality players good enough to see Malaysia qualify for the Asian Cup and World Cup one day.
From 2019, we must aim to qualify for the AFC youth tournaments, like we did this year. We must be consistent every year as this will signify progress.
The reason I have included targets such as qualifying for the Olympics in the Road Map is to put pressure on the concerned parties to work harder. I have to admit, however, that we might now achieve some of the targets, but it does not matter... what is important is that we aim for bigger goals.
We also hope to be in the world’s top 70 by 2030. Again this is a target that we aim to achieve if other aspects are met along the years.
Anyway, we will have progress reports every three months, not this year as the period is too short since the launch. We will issue our first report either in February or March. We will amend our planning and targets accordingly if we achieve them faster or feel we cannot do so.
Q: What are your plans for futsal and women’s football?
A: We will introduce the Pro League next season and the format will be home-and-away with two divisions just like the MLeague.
It will be longer, maybe eight months. We have plans to allow teams to hire foreign players but that will probably become a reality in two or three years.
Women’s football will also be developed and steps will be taken to make sure all affiliates participate in the annual Tun Sharifah Rodziah Cup. Many states are not interested in developing women’s football as they rather spend on their men. For now, it is a zonal competition and in two years, we will have teams play home-and-away in a more competitive environment for more than seven months.
Q: Two teams (Felcra and Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia) are out of next season’s Premier League while many other teams have cut their budgets for the new season. Is this healthy?
A: I believe we should only have quality teams with healthy financial backing in the league. If we have only 10 good teams in one division, then let’s make do with what we have instead of bringing in more teams who are not financially strong as it will only affect operations. Things will become better,I hope, when club licensing requirement goes full swing.
Q: Are you planning to revive the Merdeka Tournament which was last held in 2013 as an Under-23 event?
A: One of my goals is to revive the Merdeka Tournament because it has sentimental value. But the problem is we cannot find suitable dates for the next two or three years because of the qualifiers for the World Cup and other tournaments.
The only available dates inside the Fifa calendar are the 12 days in March, but it is not suitable to host the tournament as Merdeka Day falls in August.
If we organise it in March, then people might question us. We have other Fifa dates after March, but all are taken up for the World Cup-cum-Asian Cup qualifiers.
We will face problems, if we have it outside the Fifa calendar.
Our clubs will not release players while other national teams will also decline due to domestic commitments.
At the same time, we do not want to disrupt our MLeague. We, however, are planning to organiseafour-nation tournament in March and we have written to several teams from this region, East Asia and South Asia.
Q: Will our national team play quality opponents in friendly matches from next year?
A: We have planned out the calendar for the national team. Tan Cheng Hoe’s side will play more teams ranked between 100 and 140 in the world. There are many teams in the top 140 that we are capable of beating and we have picked our opponents.
Of course, we want to play with lower-ranked European teams like Malta but it is tough as the Fifa calendar is already packed with the respective continents’ tournaments and qualifiers.