How to fight match-fixing in Malaysia Football le?

We should fight fire with bigger fire. Malaysia should legalise football betting to stamp out match-fixing.

We cannot stop betting, is a culture among Malaysian… if you can’t beat them join them! Even ah po, ah pek, ah lian, ah beng, you and me also bet! In those 4D shops, we can see multicultural Malaysia Malays, Chinese, Indian and even Pendatang Haram.…

Legalised betting will help prevent match-fixing. The money can be ploughed back to provide better training facilities for the players. Make those illegal bookies run out of business, now we got legal 4D and illegal 4D, people still prefer the legal one because more guarantee mah! Some more gomen can tax the legal 4D le…

Betting on football is illegal but neighbouring Singapore has legalised it.

It was difficult to estimate how widespread match-fixing was in Malaysian football. Obviously, it is happening. But I do not know how widespread it is, it could be caused by greed or due to someone not being able to feed his kids.

The scandal is the latest blow to Malaysian football, which has struggled to recover from a 1994 investigation that saw 126 players questioned. In that debacle, 21 players and coaches were sacked, while 58 players were suspended by FAM for corruption.

Malaysian football has seen it all in recent years, most of them bad when it comes to performance on the pitch. From being one of Asia’s powerhouses in the 1980s, Malaysia’s ranking in world football has been in freefall for sometime. The latest FIFA ranking has Malaysia at 164, behind the likes of impoverished countries like Myanmar and Palestine.

Surely things can’t get any worse

I feel sad that football bribery has come back to haunt us all. I can still remember when the scandal broke out in 1995 as I was then living near Likas stadium; I always heard uncle2 talking about the score even before the game start. I thought it was a joke but 9 out 10 times, its accurate.

It is a disgrace.

The bribery scandal in Sabah in 1995 turned many spectators away from Likas Stadium. Now we are rocked by another scandal involving Sarawak and Police players. When are we going to learn? Our standard of football is getting worse.

In the 1980s, the Malaysian football team could overcome the likes of Japan and South Korea but now these countries had improved by leaps and bounds to the point of being able to play in the World Cup finals.

Other countries that used to be at our level have overtaken us in football. Although we are in a professional era, our players are far from professionals.

Comparatively, the standard of Malaysian football was higher than the professional league currently. What is baffling is that the players who are highly rewarded still get involved in match-fixing.

That the match-fixing could be due to late payment of players’ wages and the low wages received.

We cannot put all the blame on the players. Bookies must also be hauled up to face the wrath of the law. Players, officials and the public must cooperate in stamping out is problem.

There is no short cut. Where there is a will, there is a way. FAM compels football associations to pay the players’ monthly wages in full to prevent bookies from approaching players to fix matches.