Next year marks a decade of the privatisation of our football league and the incorporation of the Malaysian Football League (MFL), which was then established as Football Malaysia Limited Liability Partnership (FMLLP).
The privatisation of the league was a necessary restructuring exercise that aligned with the transformational expectations of the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) and was a response to the need for the league to quickly adapt to emerging global trends and practices in modern football, ensuring that our league remained relevant and competitive in the market.
Since then, there has always been an air of distrust, at times bordering on disdain, between the football men and those who seek to run football from the boardroom.
The forgettable treatment I experienced from the technical hierarchy at Perak FC was a clear illustration of that cultural clash. I was undermined, destabilised, and continually prodded towards the exit by what I would call “a football genius who knows absolutely nothing about sports marketing”.
It’s hard to get into the minds of the football men because you’d spend hours wandering around in a fog of idiocy, bumping only occasionally into some half-baked business ideas that are entirely focused on silverware.
In their minds, football is the responsibility of the state, and therefore it is acceptable that their extravagant salaries are financed by taxpayers.
In their minds, sponsors would start crashing through their doors when they have rows and rows of silverware stacked in their trophy cupboards and a stadium overflowing with people.
Tradition? It is the only thing they have time for apart from football. Tradition speaks to them on how a football club should be handled. It drills into them how the corporate types should be squeezed and how hardworking executives on minimum wage should be grateful for the opportunity to be associated with the club.
Tunku Ismail Ibrahim, the owner of Johor Darul Ta’zim Football Club, has said before that pouring money into football won’t help. And having worked in a football club, I can verify that his suspicions about a sclerotic bureaucracy or management are plainly justified.
Football clubs are awash with money, but it is very badly distributed and managed.
In the past decade, our football has expanded in direct correlation with the increase in funding and the decline in efficiency. Clubs are obsessed with short-term strategies that exclusively result in an exponential increase in salaries of players and coaches. Little to none of these additional investments are channelled towards the backroom executives responsible for the financial growth and commercial sustainability of the club.
But it would be wrong to let bureaucracy and the technical hierarchy become the enemies of our privatisation initiatives.
The privatisation of the football league is a massive transformational change that requires extensive investment in change management. Comprehensive investment in change management is needed to drive successful acceptance and readiness for the intended change within the industry. It would allow various stakeholders to appreciate and commit to the shift and work effectively throughout the process.
The lack of effective change management has resulted in outcomes that are unpredictable and expensive in terms of both time and resources. Stakeholders develop resistance and, in extreme cases, defiance, which has caused many of our football clubs to crash and become insolvent.
What happens when the football league ends up with fewer than 10 teams competent to obtain a licence to play? That’s going to be pretty awkward.
The views expressed here are the personal opinion of the writer’s and do not necessarily represent that of Twentytwo13.
