Even after the Football Association of Malaysia (FAM) secretary-general Noor Azman Rahman was suspended in an attempt to bring the FAM–FIFA Foreign Player Naturalisation Fiasco to a close, the scandal refuses to die down.
Weeks have passed since the scandal erupted, but somehow we seem to be nowhere closer to a resolution, although everyone from Former Prime Minister Mahathir to Sports Minister Hannah Yeoh have talked about it.
One thing for sure however, although no one seems to have any idea as to who to hold responsible for the fiasco, everyone seems to be quite certain that the one person who is not at fault is the Tunku Mahkota Johor (TMJ), Tunku İsmail Sultan İbrahim.
National coach Peter Cklamovski, for example has said that the “mess” that resulted in Fifa sanctioning the national body and seven ‘heritage’ footballers is FAM’s doing, not Tunku Ismail Ibrahim. He also revealed Tunku Ismail, the Regent of Johor, was the one responsible for securing funds from Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim.
In his remarks, the coach even went out of his way to praise TMJ’s role in Malaysian football.
“From what I’m told, there’s a lot of negativity towards TMJ, which is unfair and unwarranted. He’s a visionary leader, and without him, Malaysian football would have been finished long ago.
“Who gets the funding and support from the prime minister? It’s TMJ, not FAM. Who arranges the chartered flights, ensures we prepare professionally, and organises our logistics? It’s TMJ. The support he gives us to perform at our best is immense.
“All the mess with Fifa, the administrative errors – that’s FAM, not TMJ. My message to all Malaysians is this: without TMJ, Malaysian football is finished. I’ll leave it at that," Cklamvoski said.
The Harimau Malaya project CEO, Rob Friend, appears to share the same opinion as Cklamovski.
Speaking at a tense press conference on Friday, Friend was emphatic: TMJ's role, he said, was “not operational” — only “visionary.”
“He’s not operational. He’s our visionary. He sets the direction and motivation. These players want to play for him,” Friend said .
He insisted that TMJ merely provided the vision for identifying players of Malaysian heritage and encouraging them to play for the national team .
Curiously, however, The Scoop has suggested that TMJ’s role may have been more direct than the official narrative lets on. The outlet pointed out that TMJ himself had publicly announced — through his social media — that “we have identified six to seven players” and had urged both the government and FAM to expedite their documentation so that they could represent Malaysia in the Asian Cup qualifiers.
Today (October 25), TMJ himself has come out to have his say on the subject.
On one hand, TMJ said he disagreed with the suspension of Noor Azman Rahman, arguing that everyone within FAM should take collective responsibility. Yet on the other hand, he also downplayed the entire controversy, asserting that there was nothing fundamentally wrong with the documentation process — that the documents of the seven sanctioned players were legitimate, even if FIFA didn’t think so.
So, since TMJ believes the documents are authentic, does he believe that FAM will ultimately win the appeal process and get FIFA to reverse its decision?
Oddly enough, TMJ doesn't seem to think so.
Instead, he seems fairly certain that FIFA will not reverse its decision — and that the best Malaysia can hope for is a reduction of the punishment.
Also, while TMJ believes that the complaint originated from Vietnam, he doesn’t think that the Vietnamese Football Association itself lodged it. Rather, he speculated that it might have come from “someone in Vietnam,” without saying exactly who he thinks that person might be.
“So, we do not know. It’s not the VFF secretary-general, it’s not the president or whatnot. That was what I was told,” Tunku Ismail told reporters.
“It’s quite funny to be honest that Fifa would even entertain anybody because I bet you there are a lot of complaints out there by whoever. But for Fifa to even entertain and go to that extent, I feel a bit funny to be honest with you,” he added on.
As to his own role in the issue, TMJ also has dismissed criticisms aimed at him over the state of football in the country, saying it is nothing new, and he is not bothered by claims that he is to blame for the country’s football woes.
“I have been blamed for Malaysia’s football problems for 13 years.
“If blaming me helps you to sleep soundly at night, then it’s not a problem,” he said.
Anyhow, after hearing what all that has been said about the matter, I must say that I am having a lot of doubts as to whether the issue is anywhere near a resolution.
It doesn’t seem close to being resolved because though everyone is having their say, no one seems to be saying what actually matters, which is whether this is actually a case of “cheating, pure or simple” as FIFA puts it, or a “technical error” as FAM insists it is, and name the person responsible for it.
Instead, they seem to be vacillating between two positions — on one hand saying that FAM is right and that the issue is just a minor documentation error, while on the other hand agreeing that FIFA is right, since FAM’s secretary-general has been suspended and they don’t think the appeal will succeed.
When they can’t even settle on what they believe, it’s hard to imagine them getting to the root of the problem, figuring out who’s actually responsible, or finding any real closure.
From the way everyone is responding — it feels like everybody is trying their best to talk around the issue, without ever actually having to address it head on.
It is like everyone involved can see that there is an elephant in the room. Everyone understands that to solve the problem, you have to get the elephant out of the room, and to get the elephant out of the room, you first have to acknowledging that there is an elephant in the room, yet no one, it seems, wants to be the first to say that there is an elephant in the room.
Instead, when compelled to speak , they are all talking about about the carpet, the lighting, and the colour of the curtains in the room — but what they all seem to be unanimous in not speaking about, is about the elephant in the room.
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