Malaysia's Great Footballing Opportunity

M'sia's disastrous showing at the AFC Championship is exactly what we deserved. I feel really vindicated having written in my first blog here about the problems afflicting Malaysian footbll and how they can be solved-at least on the administrative part, the government is going down the same direction I am thinking (and indeed, practically everyone else thinks the same as me on that one).

Hopefully the politicians will truly leave Malaysian football alone, but let's wait and see. The good showing of the juniors (U20 runner-up in the SE Asian Championship to host Vietnam, 2nd year running we've been 2nd; runner-up for the U15 side at the Arsenal compe, and our U19's drawing Chelsea, and just losing to PSV and Bayern Munich) shows that all is not lost yet.

We beat Thailand, Indonesia and Vietname as often as they beat us-they took the AFC Championship seriously and that made all the difference. Now, the talk is on nutrition-clearly ours is a team bereft of fitness-I bet half the squad smokes and eat all the local delicacies all the time. Others are becoming more professional as we become more lackadaisical.

I seriously believe we have reached the lowest ebb at 155 in the world-we aren't that bad, and now we must prove it. But if even Claude Le Roy (Cameroon coach at past WC) and Jorvan Vieira (Iraqi coach at ths AFC championship) can't change our players attitudes, then all the best coaches in the world can't help our team. At least our juniors are showing some fight.