You may imagine as you sip on a cup of freshly grounded coffee, that thanks to the FA of Malaysia (FAM), everything about Malaysian football is slowly taking shape.
Our national football team is now worth the watch, we have footballers in Portugal, Belgium, Thailand and Japan, doing the country proud.
If we want to keep this entire warmth going, it is essential that the club licensing programme is embraced to its fullest extent.
You may wonder why this is relevant. Simple. Licensing is the ingredient necessary to ensure improved technical standards in coaching, promotion of youth development, and the drive to improve football infrastructure which are all being policed by the people at FAM.
This may seem well and good. But frankly, everyone seems to have forgotten the significant influence that the state governments have on our football.
It is my adamant belief that the hell within our football associations stems from the poor financial responsibility and accountability from their major sponsor – the state governments. I’ve written about how state government sponsorship policies poison football associations.
Brands play a very significant role in shaping commercial behaviour and bearings of the very football association that they are sponsoring. Most importantly, when the brand is the state government, there is greater moral and financial responsibility that needs to be satisfied.
With the current economic decline, state governments should definitely rethink their sports sponsorship strategy – changing it from a purely spending exercise into a profit-making operation.
There’s more. The state governments are not only sponsoring the football association. They are also sponsoring other sports in the state.
The best solution is to collectively pool the commercial rights of all state sports associations and have a state government-linked company to manage those rights via sponsorship sales, licensing marketing, merchandising and many other sports marketing initiatives.
Plainly, this suggestion is not a novel practice. It is applied by many established European sports institutions like Sporting Clube de Portugal, FC Barcelona and Bayern Munich. In fact, the passage or progression to implement such a suggestion could be seamless because it is merely an extension of the roles and functions of the readily available state sports council.
The commercial rights can be obtained exclusively through an annual fee (sponsorship) which positions the sports association or club in the much preferred circumstance of not having to bother at all about the business of the sport and focus entirely on what they do best, play.
Think about it. We’ve been terrorised lately with the branding flop from our ‘new’ football clubs. The business of sports should be in the hands of those who have the expertise or have the decency to invest in such expertise.
In other words, we need to ensure that the people putting money into our football can continue doing so – without depriving taxpayers of good roads, good education and better healthcare.
This is the personal opinion of the writer and does not necessarily represent the views of Twentytwo13.