Will the neutralization of foreign Liga Malaysia players help Malaysia?
March 22, 2019
Malaysia’s desire to improve their FIFA World Ranking will likely get a huge boost if the Football Association of Malaysia’s proposal to offer citizenship to foreign players in the M-League gets the green light from the government.
According to FAM president Datuk Hamidin Mohd Amin, the proposal on the naturalisation plan would be submitted to the government after their executive meeting in Penang on March 30.
Hamidin told The Star that “Our mechanism to naturalise players is based on studies done on teams such as Japan, Singapore and Spain who have revived the sport through naturalised players,” giving indication that Malaysia intends to follow in the footsteps of such nations which catapulted their national teams into feared sides after such move.
The biggest question that remains however is if such move would be beneficial to Malaysian football as a whole.
This comes as Malaysia continues to struggle in creating a more professional environment for their local league which is still plaqued with unpaid salaries of players and sub-standard performances of teams especially in the lower divisions.
There is also the issue of lack of representation raised by those in Sabah and Sarawak when it comes to player selection into the national team.
The neutralisation of foreign players therefore would likely be seen as a move to further alienate players from both Sabah and Sarawak from the national team, hence disabling born Malaysians from being called up to the team in the near future.
However on a positive note, the increased competition provided by these neutralized players would result in Malaysian footballers working harder to gain a place in the national team, hence pushing the standards of Malaysian football forward.
This however ca only happen if these neutralizing foreign players are of spectacular quality when compared to their Malaysian counterparts.
If they are just slightly above the quality Malaysian footballers currently show, then the move to neutralize foreign players just to improve FIFA World Rankings of Malaysia may not work for Malaysia.
Also Read:
What did we learn from the Malaysia – Singapore Airmarine Cup 2019?
Telekom Malaysia – Malaysia Football League sponsorship deal gets ‘messy’
3 ways to improve confidence in Sarawak football
This article is brought to us by our Sports Writers Club resident columnist – Cyril Dason.
