One day, when I finish shouting and writing articles for Twentytwo13 and Bahas Bola, I want to be the manager, chief executive officer and president of Terengganu football.
I want to sort the club out. I love Terengganu the same way Arsenal fans love their team. Unlike an Arsenal fan, I’m forced to sit and watch the love of my life get ruined.
The first thing to be done under my autonomous dictatorship will be reviewing the salary structure of the club. Salary spending will be slashed by 50 per cent, ensuring no more than 45 per cent of the club’s revenue will be towards salaries.
Even though this may upset players, to keep them happy, I will guarantee their monthly salaries will be on time.
Some fans would find this incredibly worrying, as it could mean lesser quality in the team. Those fans are wrong. Price tags are over-rated and lazy indicators of quality.
Five years ago, Terengganu fans celebrated the return of forward Norshahrul Idlan Talaha. He scored a mere five goals in 30 matches between 2015 and 2016. Not worth the price as he was rumoured to be receiving RM80,000 a month.
We see this problem not just in Malaysia, but around the world. Chelsea signed Fernando Torres from Liverpool in 2011 for a staggering RM275 million. He only scored 15 goals in 82 matches.
Five years prior, Chelsea signed Andriy Shevchenko from AC Milan for RM165 million. The Ukrainian legend scored 14 goals in his first season and eight the season after. At the time of his purchase, Shevchenko was the most expensive player ever bought by an English club. He certainly was not worth the price either.
The next thing I will work on is to remedy the lack of trust and confidence towards the football club. There are four mechanisms that we can explore to straighten out the perceptions of our potential brand partners and fans:
• Validating the partnership or sponsorship prospectus with a third-party agency.
• Commitment to transparency through the disclosure of an audited financial report.
• Encourage crowdfunding of ideas through the organisation of a partners’ forum.
• Activate a reputation recovery campaign via new and existing communication channels.
I suspect that by practising a more sustainable salary structure and restoring the trust and confidence towards the club, we will unlock market opportunities for potential investments, sponsorships and/or acquisitions.
Since we would have a surplus by paying less in salaries, I would begin looking inwards, creating depth and providing a development pathway for talents from Terengganu. To achieve this, I will look towards the swaggering All Blacks for inspiration and knowledge.
New Zealand’s famed All Blacks are the most successful sports team of all time, with a win ratio of nearly 80 per cent.
In a sport that grants and celebrates naturalisation of players, the All Blacks have none. It started in 1903 and has sustained for more than a century due to an extensive ecosystem and an impressive league structure filled with a large pool of world-class rugby talents.
This is what Terengganu Menteri Besar and Terengganu FA president Datuk Seri Dr Ahmad Samsuri Mokhtar must understand in appointing a chief executive for the Terengganu Football Club in the next few months.
Sadly, many in Terengganu will not be able to grasp the complexities of sports marketing and sponsorship sales.
But that doesn’t matter because the appointed politicians will just continue to spend state government funds to choose the first XI.
This is the personal opinion of the writer and does not necessarily represent the views of Twentytwo13.
