SEPT 4 — As usual, on my run to work every morning, I would radio hop between stations. On one station, that familiar tone of beep beep beep means that the news is about to come on. So I didn’t meddle with the presets anymore as I wanted my dose of news.

After a few rounds of 1mdb doing find, our previous PM is out of line, the current PM wishes so and so came the sports update. Now I have to admit that that was news. The newsreader had mentioned something about Malaysia’s World Cup Qualifying run and how it ended in a defeat to the UAE. Nothing to be surprised about as Malaysia always lost in football.

But what came as a shock was that the score was 10 in favor of UAE and 0 for Malaysia. Still something inside of me said that this news must be wrong. The score couldn’t have hit double figure I thought. This was absurd on so many levels. I even conjured up excuses such as this must have been one of the junior squads.

So I waited till I got to my office and investigated. Turned out it was true. The score was indeed 10 – 0.

Now what happened? I don’t know since I didn’t watch the match. But I must reiterate that losing had come as no surprise but the score was totally obscene. Losing double figure in football is like a flesh wound being poured salt on. It is quite simply embarrassing.

I decided to check out what other matches Malaysia had played in the qualifying round. Malaysia is in a group that had Palestine, Timor Leste, Saudi Arabia and the UAE. Then I checked matches played and came another round of surprise. We’d lost to Palestine 6 to zero and drew with Timor Leste a goal each.

I don’t know how losing 6 goals to Palestine escaped me but I must admit that I am not a fan of the national squad. I will support them if I watch them play but I am not a fan.

Losing to Palestine when taken into context is a much bigger shock than losing to UAE. Sure one could say that 10 against 6, losing 10 means your honor is in the gutter. But when you look at Palestine, who are constantly at war, who are oppressed, who have no resources to feed and shelter itself, whose people are preyed upon, and you turn your sights on Malaysia, how could they have won that match defies belief?

Malaysia is in no way perfect but I would think that our footballers have no fear of crossing checkpoints manned by soldiers who brandish automatic rifles. I would also think that our footballers have no worries about their training ground being shelled.

Losing to UAE it seems is just one more event in a long run of past and future events of embarrassing moment for our football. Maybe we should just call it quits? Maybe we should just quit participating in international events as it seems like it is a waste of money.

I mentioned that I am no fan of the national squad; I am also not a fan of the local league. I tried giving it a chance when I was around 11 or 12 watching it with my late granddad. But the quality was atrocious. Players couldn’t even place a 10 feet pass were not worth watching. The pitches back then also seemed like ground zero. Whether this had played a role in the footballers being unable to simply make a 10 feet sideway pass I don’t know. Those were the days when cigarettes were major sponsors.

I am also no fan of our local league now. When the best of the best from the league gets to play for the national team and gets trashed 10 and 6 goals, is it really worth watching? I think they still can’t muster a simple pass like when I was 11 years old.

Now I have no idea how much is spent on in developing football for this country but I wish to state that maybe, just maybe, a round table discussion is needed. Allocations should be shoe-stringed. It would be even better if allocations were similar in size and structure to that of Palestine. Maybe our FA could send some delegates to Timor Leste, the tiny nation who we only managed to draw and have a look at their spending?

You have one big toilet and you have a lot of money. The toilet is our football and the money is taxpayers’ money. Why should we flush all that money down? We should be doing something else with it.

Maybe Malaysians are just not good at being a team. If you look at it closely, the many people of Malaysia are also not a team. We have team M, team C and team I who are not good at being a team and who are always at odds with each other. So maybe we should just focus on individual sports. Maybe all that money could be better spent in trying to develop another Pandelela or another Chong Wei.

* This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of Malay Mail Online.