So far away from home, yet i feel the pain....
I've been away from home for 16 days now, am more than 1,600 miles away from KL, and yet, it hurts.... i'm left to monitor the developments from Dhaka through the internet, its something my friends no longer discuss, and i suppose a lot of us have already given up hope on them.....
I'm talking about the national football team back home.... we went through all the hassle of winning the bid to become co-hosts of the Asian Cup, we turned away arguably the world's most widely supported club, Manchester United and in the process, deprived its fans of seeing their favourite stars play in our own backyard......
And then we get whacked, 5-0 and 5-1 by China and Uzbekistan respectively..... Even though we manage to restrict Iran to 2 goals, the damage was already done..... Our pride and dignity torn to pieces, we were a laughing stock within the football community..... the national coach was sacked even before we completed our 3 game fixture, and the deputy president of our football association resigned in shame.....
But should we really be surprised at the results? What made these people think a more positive outcome could be obtained? Unlike our neighbours and fellow co-hosts, Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam, who managed to surprise their more fancied opponents (Vietnam even made it to the last 8 of the competition), we were a big joke, and the AFC probably thought they made a mistake in letting us co-host the competition.....
Looking at the standard of our current national league, the limited pool of talent that we have available, i cant say i'm surprised about this debacle.... we dont even have a proper development programme, unlike the europeans, so we dont pick out young talent and develop them further.... and among the current pool of players that we do have, they lack the ambition and drive to succeed.....
We never stood a chance really, and the whole competition became one big farce, leaving everyone who cares about football in malaysia feeling embarassed..... i dont see why we even bother with all the competitions, there will be not be an upswing in our fortunes anytime soon, and there isnt anything even the best footballing brains can do for us at this point in time.... maybe if we start having a proper programme to identify and develop young talent (and there must be some amongst us 24 million malaysians), we'll see something happen 15 years from now....
But until then, i wont be holding my breath.... and i hope the government and the national football association wont throw anymore good money in all these futile initiatives..... there's many other better ways to spend our money in developing our sporting talent.....
I'm talking about the national football team back home.... we went through all the hassle of winning the bid to become co-hosts of the Asian Cup, we turned away arguably the world's most widely supported club, Manchester United and in the process, deprived its fans of seeing their favourite stars play in our own backyard......
And then we get whacked, 5-0 and 5-1 by China and Uzbekistan respectively..... Even though we manage to restrict Iran to 2 goals, the damage was already done..... Our pride and dignity torn to pieces, we were a laughing stock within the football community..... the national coach was sacked even before we completed our 3 game fixture, and the deputy president of our football association resigned in shame.....
But should we really be surprised at the results? What made these people think a more positive outcome could be obtained? Unlike our neighbours and fellow co-hosts, Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam, who managed to surprise their more fancied opponents (Vietnam even made it to the last 8 of the competition), we were a big joke, and the AFC probably thought they made a mistake in letting us co-host the competition.....
Looking at the standard of our current national league, the limited pool of talent that we have available, i cant say i'm surprised about this debacle.... we dont even have a proper development programme, unlike the europeans, so we dont pick out young talent and develop them further.... and among the current pool of players that we do have, they lack the ambition and drive to succeed.....
We never stood a chance really, and the whole competition became one big farce, leaving everyone who cares about football in malaysia feeling embarassed..... i dont see why we even bother with all the competitions, there will be not be an upswing in our fortunes anytime soon, and there isnt anything even the best footballing brains can do for us at this point in time.... maybe if we start having a proper programme to identify and develop young talent (and there must be some amongst us 24 million malaysians), we'll see something happen 15 years from now....
But until then, i wont be holding my breath.... and i hope the government and the national football association wont throw anymore good money in all these futile initiatives..... there's many other better ways to spend our money in developing our sporting talent.....
posted by zufar | 9:23 AM
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