Youth and Sports Minister Khairy Jamaluddin said Asean sports ministers have expressed support to Malaysia's initiative to conduct immediately a study on the possibility of being host to the quadrennial global footballing event.
"I would like to stress here that the agreement is not for us to make a bid to host the World Cup, but to study whether a bid is feasible or not, which will be conducted by the Asean Football Federation (AFF).
"Once the study is done, we will forward the result to our respective governments, through our football associations, to decide whether we should form a joint committee for the bid," he told a a press conference today after the Third Asean Ministerial Meeting on Sports (AMMS-3).
Khairy said they hoped to complete the feasibility study by next year, and come up with the joint committee then.
He explained that they have to forward any bidding documents to FIFA by 2019 to stand any chance of playing host.
Khairy added that the cost to put in a bid is still yet unclear as it will mainly depend on how many of the Asean nations will be hosting the event.
"We have to take into account other factors as not all the countries will play host.
"For 10 countries to host may not be accepted by FIFA. I was made to understand that FIFA may consider having four nations as host," he added. -BernamaMalaysians have a dream. A big dream. To watch their national team playing in the most prestigious sports competition in the world, the FIFA World Cup. For years they have been trying to progress through a series of qualifiers in order to compete on the biggest stage. This of course, have never became a reality, not even once. Football Association of Malaysia (FAM) have long been criticised by fans for the ultimate failure, mainly accused for being incompetent, obsolete and lack of proper progress in terms of professional leagues and the development of youth.
Not to mention the poor performance by the senior national team whenever the team played in an important match such as World Cup or Asian Cup qualifier which the only way for the team to progress is to win and collect as many points as possible, something Malaysia failed to do all this time.
The world ranking also played the role in setting up the path for the national team in World Cup qualifications whether its going to be easy or a difficult one. Normally, the higher the ranking, the better the pot you will get and in this case, the easier the matches or the group will be with the high possibility of collecting more points against a much lower ranking teams, or roughly said, a much weaker opponents. This is something that FAM surprisingly have yet to realize and even at one point, played down the importance of ranking. Remember the phrase 'ranking is not important?'
Malaysia highest world ranking is 75th in 1993, a year before the match-fixing scandals were exposed and the lowest is 170th in 2008, a year after participating in the Asian Cup as a co-host nation. Now? Malaysia currently in 168th, few months after playing in the 2014 AFF Cup final, losing to Oman 6-0, draw 1-1 against Timor Leste and losing 6-0 for the second time, this time to Palestine.
There are talks on how to improve the national team, that includes naturalizing a foreign player. If according to the Article 17: Acquisition of a new nationality, it seems feasible enough to recruit some of the foreign footballers who have played long enough in Malaysia and good enough to play for the national team. However, this have never been materialised.
Some views naturalizing foreigners as unpatriotic and damaging the national pride despite the fact that there are many other countries have done it without any shame and without any trouble. The reluctance of the previous FAM President, Sultan Ahmad Shah to allow foreigners in the national team might also contributed to the current state of the national team. Former FAM General Secretary, Dato' Ibrahim Saad recently revealed how FAM are very much interested with the idea of naturalization, but since the president disagreed, they stopped the project immediately.
Other reasons include the lack of professionalism, poor league schedule, the lack of interest in youth development. Recently, National Football Development Programme (NFDP) was launched with a strategy of developing Malaysian footballers from the age of 13 until 17 under the stewardship of Lim Teong Kim, the former Bayern Munich youth coach. Their mission is clear, to qualify for the World Cup U-17, World Cup U-20, and most importantly to groom them to be the future Malaysian footballers playing abroad, subsequently improved the senior national team.
This seemed realistic, but why after all this, Malaysia suddenly wants to bid as a host for the World Cup? Are you trying to take a short-cut by qualifying automatically as a host nation? Why not qualified properly instead of taking a short-cut? Or do you already think that NFDP will be a failure? How is qualifying through as a host nation any better than deservedly qualified through result and performance? Do you know how bad the state of Ringgit currency right now?
P.S.- Naturalized cannot, but bid for World Cup can. So shameless.