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New Straits Times

Critic warns M-League football fans will turn to other sports

KUALA LUMPUR: The M-League is in danger of being labelled as a tainted product. That means it can lead to fans drifting away from the league and sponsors not having anything to do with it. There have been repeated sanctions from Fifa on M-League clubs, and this is tarnishing the image of Malaysian football. In recent years, the world body has slapped transfer bans on nine Malaysian clubs — Terengganu FC, Kelantan Darul Naim, Kelantan FC, Kelantan FA, PT Athletic FC, Sarawak United, Perlis, Melaka United FC, and Perlis — over financial issues and regulatory breaches. Sports observer Sadek Mustaffa said these continuous issues besetting the M-League will turn both the fans and potential sponsors away. "Issues like this affect the M-League's market value. "How would the sponsors feel with these issues? This happens almost every year," said Sadek. "The broadcast value (for matches) will be affected too and all this will result in lesser income to M-League clubs. "Foreign players will also be reluctant to play in the M-League due to this bad image." He warned that the fans will shift to other sports, and football popularity will go down and the football industry will be impacted. Sadek said the FA of Malaysia (FAM) and the Malaysian Football League (MFL) need to improve their efforts to safeguard Malaysia's football image. "The stakeholders need to be accountable for this problem, they need to look at the gate collections or fan attendance at the stadiums. "The crowd is no more like before and it's dwindling every season," said Sadek. "If you look at the overall numbers, it's not really positive. Even at the last Malaysia Cup final in Bukit Jalil, the tickets were not sold out. "FAM and MFL need to look at this seriously, they need to come out with measures to deal with these issues. "Clubs just cannot be repeat offenders, there's club licensing but we still have the problem of unpaid wages. "Things need to change with monitoring and enforcement on errant teams."