The Malaysian Insider :: Opinion
The Malaysian Insider :: Opinion |
| If you hate football, stop reading (Part 1) Posted: 05 Dec 2012 03:36 PM PST DEC 6 — Malaysia are two two-legged match-ups away from retaining the ASEAN football title. The right to lord over the rest in the island region for another two years may continue if we are triumphant on December 22. It is insignificant to note in current climes that Malaysia is joint 5th in an 11-team mini-table for ASEAN, and it is probably unworthy of mentioning that Malaysia is 163th in the global ranking of 207 teams. Four hard matches away from keeping the title and many are going to play up a victory beyond reason. I'm not here about to beat down Malaysian football. That is disrespectful. More than that, it is akin to double-footed tackling my own acute cruciate ligament (ACL) to spite myself. However, I want to talk about how much better it can be. Our value, our strength, our sense of national pride will flow if at the end of a World Cup Finals' group match our players exchange handshakes with other professionals with mutual respect. That's national pride, right on the pitch. The Harimaus (Tigers) laughing and jibing with their opponents — after a hard-fought contest. Having a Malaysian lift the World Cup trophy would be worth 15 self-immolations; but in professional sports to develop the game enough to compete correctly at the highest level is value enough for our players and supporters, win or lose. To belong in the list your SkySports presenter on a Sunday late kick-off would categorise as a "proper football playing nation", when a Malaysian left-back emerges from the tunnel at Anfield. Malaysian football would have arrived and standing proud. So when Brazil plays Malaysia, it is a football match not market strategy. It was the case before the J-League when Brazil played Japan in the '80s, however no mad Brazil team would consider a Japan match today a formality. This is where Malaysia must head in football, since so many of us play it, an exponential number watch it and a minority of us divorced over it. However, the observations below are applicable to any popular sport here, which by definition a professional sport. If enough people like it then, hockey and badminton, for instance, there has to be enough TV and stadium tickets to professionalise it. How do we get there? As in everything else, it is about process. Denying process and running roughshod over ideas is a Malaysian malaise still wrecking sports. Sports is education The anatomy of a left-swung, goal-bound volley from the edge of the penalty box after five crisp passes begins a long time ago. Probably in a patch on Rusila or Silam. It is a long road to great. How many of us had football coaches at primary level who knew what they were doing? My brother taught me how to kick, and I was shooting with my right inside for years, since that is how he taught me to kick. Result: I had accuracy but no power. One day I saw one senior player tell his favourite junior that you have to strike through with your laces to get more power. Eureka, eavesdropping changed my universe! Without enough junior-level coaches with adequate number of pitches and minimum level of kit, all your impressionable and Premier-football loving kids are going to be "middle-schoolers trying to write mid-term papers on Columbus using crayons, referring to TV manuals." Using a general education parallelism, if there not enough grammar teachers for seven-year-olds and those children are promoted along, hoping a Nobel Prize winner for literature would save them at 17 is wishful thinking. They fall behind even to impoverished areas in the globe like Africa and South America. Technique is not inherited. A child of two geniuses won't be able to speak any language if he is kept isolated in a cage for his first six years, even after and despite his genes. Hundreds of thousands of Malaysian children so wanting to be footballers are being failed by the lack of process. They never had a chance. In all the local universities I have been involved with in the past, the local kids are without exemption bullied on the football pitches by foreign students. Though the talent might be equally distributed, many of these kids who come to Malaysia for a better education actually received basic football education at home. Therefore, our kids can buy all the Chelsea and Manchester United tops they want, but if no one knowledgeable teaches them to how trap and pass the ball, and then later to redirect and make runs, then the less gifted will always bully our kids on a football pitch. Which brings us to the few dedicated sports schools expected to produce our great footballers. Giving a small group of lads football education, though belated, in their teenage years will develop them, but it fails on two grounds; they will maul the other local teams and the system is reliant on the assumption that the small group picked are the best to benefit from the programme. What guarantee is there that the 0.01 per cent chosen from all football playing lads in the country will be the real stars of the future? What if statistics slap administrators in the face and suggest that the best you may have might be in the pool of 99.99 per cent, and never groomed? Train many or bring in clairvoyants as your selectors to know which 12-year-old is the "one"? Surely better having 1,000 well-drilled primary school coaches rather than 10 top senior school coaches. Resulting in 1,000 schools capable of playing in their respective zones in an orderly manner, producing competitive football of the level necessary at the players' age-groups — everyone benefits. If there are 100,000 students having learned their trade properly and plying it in difficult matches for six years in primary schools, then Malaysia would have identified over that period 100 players capable of taking their game a level higher and 10 from them exceptional. And if the football god's decide, a Messi or Ronaldo from the 10. Even if Malaysia prefers to rely on the club system to develop young players, the net has to be wide enough and large enough so that the pool is not small. Playing in the mist A story to tell the affect. There was a lad who was fantastic with the ball and dribbled aplenty, with lethal shooting. But he never understood the offside trap. When we played in a minor league, he'd be a headless chicken. The coach was equally clueless, so the gifted lad would stand and get increasingly frustrated as opposing defenders laughed at his ignorance. He tried to imagine what the offside trap meant, which then made him look dafter. Over time he gave up league-playing and only kicked about with the lads at the local park, 15 against 15 players knocking themselves silly and that failed player ghosting past the many and scoring since there are no linesmen. He is not the only one. Even if I ask most people on how many opponents you have to have after you when a ball is played to you in order to beat the offside trap, the usual answer would be one. Actually, the answer is two; it is the last man and the goalkeeper. If for some reason the goalkeeper is ahead of play, then just being before the last defender will not keep you onside. I had to go to referee school at the KL Football Association to learn that. That is why the education element of sports coupled with the application of the learning in a considerable number of matches as players develop is critical. Without that, talking about the next two issues, the commercial element of football and imbuing professionalism all over football, would be futile. So that will be the next column. Still, winning is winning, and any trophy won gives impetus for improvements and progress. So, good luck to the Malaysian team about to host the Thais at home on Sunday. * Part 2: Football as a business and a professional operation. * The views expressed here are the personal opinion of the columnist. |
| Rentak sumbang perhimpunan agung Umno Posted: 05 Dec 2012 03:20 PM PST 6 DIS — Pau yang tak menyengat Perhimpunan Agung Umno senantiasa dinanti-nantikan kerana ia menjadi agenda nasional dan mendapat liputan meluas. Tidak seperti Perhimpunan Tahunan parti lain, tumpuan media adalah selektif mengikut selera tuan-tuan politik bagi memenuhi keperluan mereka. Namun begitu liputan berlebihan boleh "overkill" dari sudut komen yang melampau dengan pujian yang meleleh menyebabkan kita jadi muak. Najib bukan lagi penyelamat Di atas senarai pelakon utama ialah tidak lain tidak bukan Presiden Umno yang imejnya dicemari dengan berbagai isu sejak dia mula muncul jadi Presiden dan PM. Bermula dari isu Scorpene sejak beliau menjadi Menteri Pertahanan hinggalah kepada pembunuhan Altantuya, semuanya menjadi mimpi ngeri bagi Najib. Lebih ngeri ialah isteri Presiden Umno itu yang sering dianggap sebagai bebanan yang ditanggung oleh Umno. Najib cuba menangkis semua imej buruk ini, walaupun dia mahu dikenali sebagai PM 1 Malaysia tetapi permasalahan yang melingkari dirinya lebih sensasi dari segala program tranformasinya. Najib berdiri di pentas perhimpunan Umno tempoh hari dengan membawa semua bebanan bagasi tentang dirinya dan isterinya walaupun media longkang arus perdana cuba meringankan imej itu. Najib hambar Medan perhimpunan sebesar dewan PWTC itu adalah cukup baik untuk seseorang menampilkan dirinya sebagai pemimpin parti Melayu No. 1 di Malaysia malah di dunia. Semangat ahli parti Melayu terbesar itu juga perlu diberi suntikan pada pertemuan itu kerana mereka dibelasah kiri kanan oleh rakyat yang dah mula bosan dengan pemimpin dan wakil rakyat Umno. Persepsi di bawah cukup jelas dan diterjemahkan dalam peti-peti undi PRU ke 12 baru-baru ini. Najib tidak bersembunyi dalam hal ini malah berulang kali menyebut dalam ucapannya tentang "Kekhilafan Umno" dan merayu jangan dihukum dalam PRU ke 13 nanti. Seorang wanita yang bertweeter dengan saya dari penyokong Umno turut menyambut seruan Najib dengan mengatakan "hukuman tlh ditunai dengan tumbangnya beberapa negeri kepada pr. Apakah itu x cukup lg Yb? Umno selalu cuba baiki keadaan". Suasana yang cuba ditimbulkan oleh Najib dalam perhimpunan Umno ialah suasana menagih simpati dengan mengaku salah. Ini tidak baik pada saat Umno dicederakan dan suasana perhimpunan 3 hari itu menambahkan lagi garam pada luka orang-orang Umno. Seoalah-olah tidak cukup dengan luka lembu ketua wanitanya, Najib pula bernada pasif. Para pemerhati melihatnya sebagai nada seorang pemimpin yang sudah hilang daya juangnya. Kenyataan Najib mengiyakan tanggapan rakyat yang selama ini menganggap pembangkang memfitnah Umno dan Najib, rentak Najib cukup sumbang pada hari itu. Deepak muncul Nama Deepak sebelum ini dikaitkan dengan isu PI Bala di mana dia telah memberi sejumlah besar wang untuk PI Bala menukar kenyataan bersumpahnya yang mengaitkan penglibatan Najib dan Rosmah dalam kes pembunuhan Altantuya. Depaak muncul pada saat-saat kritikal Najib mahu memulihkan imejnya yang "suci" di hadapan perhimpunan Umno. Deepak mengakui "menolong" Rosmah dan apabila isu Altantuya mendapat tekanan dari PR, Deepak seolah mahu selamatkan dirinya dengan membuat pengakuan awal. Rentak Najib semakin sumbang dan plot semakin menarik. Ketiak Umno busuk Wee Ka Siong dari MCA memperkenalkan perkataan ketiak busuk bagi menggambarkan keadaan sesetengah bekas pemimpin kuat Umno yang dah keluar Umno. Dia merujuk kepada Datuk Seri Rahman Mydin bekas Pengerusi Dewan Perniagaan Melayu dan Dewan Perniagaan Bersama Malaysia. Dalam nada kecewa, WKS kata bila dah cerai barulah kata busuk segala-galanya, ketiak pun busuk. WKS lupa bikan sahaja DS Rahman Mydin tapi Lajim Ukim dan Tamrin Ghafar serta Kadir Syeikh Fadhil juga dah tinggal Umno. Mungkin betul juga kata WKS, ketiak Umno memang busuk dan hapak. Rakyat tidak peduli Dalam masa serangan bertubi-tubi ditujukan pada DSAI dan PAS serta DAP, perhimpunan kebangkitan rakyat di Johor menyaksikan puluhan ribu rakyat membanjiri Batu Pahat mendengar amanat pemimpin PR. Johor yang menjadi kubu Umno seolah-olah isyarat kepada berakhirnya dominasi Umno. Pada saat tepukan hambar dan pekikan sumbang perwakilan Umno menguasai dewan PWTC, rakyat sudah tidak peduli kerana mereka mahukan politik baru. Mereka tidak ada pilihan melainkan bersama PR dalam membawa gelombang baru ini. Parahnya Umno kali ini bukan kepalang, sudikah rakyat menyambut rayuan Najib sedangkan Najib sendiri kali ini teramat sumbanglah retoriknya. * The views expressed here are the personal opinion of the columnist. |
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