KUALA LUMPUR, April 13 — Claiming a systematic cover-up on the poor state of football in the country, the Tunku Mahkota of Johor is seeking to take on Youth and Sports Minister Khairy Jamaluddin as well as officials from the Football Association of Malaysia (FAM) in a televised debate.

In a late night statement on the Facebook page of state football club the Johor Southern Tigers over which he heads, Brigadier General Tunku Ismail Ibrahim called on private broadcaster Astro to arrange a programme featuring him, the minister, a FAM representative and football coaches to discuss solutions to the problems plaguing the country’s favourite sport.

“This is a challenge from me. I’m not a politician and I don’t need votes. I have no intention of being FAM president and as I have said before, football is not my bread and butter.

“So why am I doing this? I’m doing this because I’m sick and tired of the lies and cover up. As the people’s prince the people’s voices must be heard and their voices are my priority,” he wrote.

This is the second challenge Tunku Ismail has issued this week against Khairy after the latter’s remarks following Malaysia’s slide in the Fifa rankings to an all-time low of 174 last week.

On Sunday, the Johor Darul Ta’azim (JDT) owner challenged the minister to take responsibility and fix the declining state of football instead of laying the poor performances squarely on the players.

Tunku Ismail conceded that the players “lack quality” but insisted that they were not solely to blame as the fault lay in the “system in our football associations and our coaches’ training”.

He demanded the “big people in football clubs, associations and coaches” own up and be transparent to their faults.

“That is called taking responsibility, and not just running away from one, blaming players, FAM, football associations and clubs,” he wrote.

He added that efforts to repair the sport could only happen after the authorities admit there is a problem and stand together to demand changes.