SEPT 5 — Driving on the LDP on Friday morning. Radio on. “Malaysia suffered a massive 10-0 defeat at the hands of UAE.”

I thought I heard wrong. Wasn’t that, “Malaysian wins RM10,000 and a free holiday to UAE”?

But a few seconds later: “Dollah Salleh says he doesn’t understand what happened, as Malaysia slumped to their worst defeat in an international football match.”

Surely that must’ve been, “Dollah Salleh didn’t understand some international language.”?

But no. It was real. Our adult Malaysian football team conceded 10 goals in a World Cup Qualifier to UAE.

Let me break this down for those unfamiliar with the sport. You see, in football, the whole damn point of the game is to get the round thing on the field — known as the ball — into the OTHER team’s net (that rectangular opening at the end of the field). You also have to try as hard as possible not to allow the opposing team to get the ball in YOUR net.

The more balls in their net and the fewer in yours? You win lah.

However, what happened last Thursday was that the Malaysian national team — the best 11 football players in our entire nation 58 years after Merdeka(!!)— allowed the UAE national team to put the ball into their (Malaysia’s) net, not once but 10 bleedin’ times… without reply.

The only tragedy worse than this would be if Lee Chong Wei lost to Lin Dan 21-0, 21-0, 21-0 three times in a row, and after all three matches he broke his arm, fell into the drain, lost his passport, got diarrhoea and fainted on the court.

Even now I’m wondering if it’s a major September Fool joke played by bored FAM officials.

Still Harimau?

10-0. What game was this? Blind-fold hockey? I didn’t know football scoreboards could show double digits. Was our team eating shawarma outside the stadium during the match? Some news articles’ headlines said that, “UAE put 10 past hapless Malaysia.” I’m like, dude, this is beyond ‘hap’. This is soul-less, brain-less and ball-less (in every sense of that word). I’m so shocked, so beyond shocked, my psychiatrist told me to take up knitting.

10-0. Eleven crippled geriatrics couldn’t let in that number of goals if they played against Barcelona. Real Madrid couldn’t score that many goals in one match if they played against MPPJ’s kindergarten team and their lives depended on it.

10-0. Next time why don’t the Malaysian team simply cover the goal with 11!bodies? The goalie and defenders can stand directly in front of the goal and the midfielders and strikers can climb on TOP of them. This way they’ll blot out the opening entirely. Maintain the formation for 90 minutes and it’ll be 0-0 at least.

Khairy, I’m concerned. You mean you haven’t resigned yet? With this kind of result, the only way you can hold your head up high is if you went back in time to last year and threw in your letter. Are you sure we still want to call ourselves Harimau? Shouldn’t we be named Tikus Cacat instead?

I’m so embarrassed I half-wanted to call Rama Ramanathan and propose that Bersih change their colour to orange.

Hang on. Don’t our taxes in some way contribute to the making of our national football team? If so, don’t we deserve to get our money back?

Freudian fishballs

I have a theory about this kind of scoreline. Psychoanalysts like Freud believed in this idea known as the death-drive. In general, this meant that there was a part of us which leaned towards self-destruction. This wasn’t just masochism; it was, in fact, a way of “escaping” the pain of life by “returning” to some primordial maternal Edenic bliss of annihilation.

Ever go mountain-climbing and feel a creeping and not-unpleasurable urge to leap into the abyss? That kind of thing.

I’m thinking maybe our football team, after the first four goals, fell into a deathlike trance and began to enjoy letting their opponents score. Maybe as the goals kept coming in they were like, oh yeah…we’re letting in more goals than a seafood buffet has fishballs… it’s beautifulllllll!

Worse still, I think after the seventh goal, our opponents got bored. Check out the match highlights. In the second half, you can see the UAE players have stopped playing. One guy was chatting on Skype, another was doing his taxes, three were playing cards, and one fella was frying an egg.

And they still scored three more goals.

*This is the personal opinion of the columnist.