KUALA LUMPUR: In societies where accountability is a foundational pillar, transparency is treated as a matter of collective honour.
In Japan, for example, leaders do not merely apologise for institutional failure. They absorb the shame and step away permanently to allow the institution to heal. There is a Japanese proverb, “Fukusui bon ni kaerazu“. It literally means spilled water does not return to the basin. It teaches that once something has happened, it cannot simply be undone.
In governance, the saying can be interpreted this way – once trust is broken and institutional integrity shattered, you cannot simply bring the same people back and pretend nothing happened.
When governance collapses in such cultures, executives do not search for loopholes. They accept their stewardship has ended and make way for renewal.
Just look at Korea Football Association (KFA) president Chung Mong-gyu, who plans to step down after the Fifa World Cup, acknowledging criticism of his leadership. Chung’s long tenure at KFA, since 2013, has been marred by scandals at times over governance and national team appointments.
Contrast that with the crisis engulfing the Football Association of Malaysia (FAM). The seven heritage players’ citizenship fiasco was not merely a bureaucratic blunder, but a national embarrassment that has damaged the credibility of Malaysian football.
Fifa used terms such as “forged”, “falsified” and “doctored” to describe the documents submitted to establish local ancestry for foreign-born players. The subsequent 12-month international bans, financial penalties and dismissal of appeals by the Court of Arbitration for Sport did not merely punish a national team – they exposed a deeply troubled system.
The entire FAM executive committee resigned. But this is where the future of Malaysian football must be decided, and the line must be drawn firmly.
None of the committee members, FAM’s honorary president Tan Sri Hamidin Amin, general secretary Datuk Noor Azman Abdul Rahman, or national team chief executive officer Rob Friend, should be allowed to return in any capacity. Not as advisers. Not as consultants. Not through newly created positions designed to preserve influence.
Allowing any of them back into the system would be an insult to supporters and a tacit admission that the mass resignation on Jan 28 was merely a theatrical manoeuvre designed to ride out public outrage.
Sponsors, too, should reflect carefully on the standards they claim to uphold. There is little point demanding transparency and accountability from vendors while continuing to associate with an organisation mired in a governance scandal.
Spilled water does not return to the basin, and neither should failed leadership.
Yet Malaysian football’s deep-rooted problems will not disappear simply by replacing old faces with new ones. If Wisma FAM merely swaps names on office doors while preserving the same opaque and outdated culture, the next crisis is only a matter of time. Fresh faces operating within compromised systems will inevitably produce the same failures.
Real reform requires sweeping structural change across every level of the organisation. The incoming leadership must establish a truly independent compliance unit, free from internal influence and tasked with verifying institutional records and governance processes.
Those inside Wisma FAM must also understand that fair play extends beyond the pitch. It includes integrity, accountability and adherence to the rules at every level.
More importantly, the association must abandon its obsession with short-term cosmetic fixes such as fast-tracked naturalisation programmes and refocus on long-term grassroots development.
The new administration must embrace a culture of absolute transparency, where administrative reports are published openly as proof of accountability rather than hidden from scrutiny.
If football in Malaysia is to be governed by shortcuts, deception and administrative incompetence, perhaps the nation should stop pretending the sport is being managed professionally at all.
Putrajaya may be better off directing its resources, funding and emotional investment towards sports such as badminton, squash and cycling, where Malaysian athletes continue to compete honourably on the world stage. Otherwise, football risks becoming a symbol not of national pride, but of institutional decay.
And amid all this “noise”, national coach Peter Cklamovski may never truly escape the shadow hanging over Malaysian football.
