Whither the harimau’s roar?

Malaysia’s world cup journey — or rather, the sad notjourney — is laid bare in this take-no-prisoners book.

WAdit Rahim ITH the FIFA World Cup 2014 underway, football madness has hit Malaysia. Being hosted halfway across the globe in Brazil, every live telecasted match is in the late hours of the night (or early mornings, for the optimist).

But do not assume that this will stop Malaysians from watching their favourite teams, for it has always been in our DNA to watch the beautiful game.

Such is the craze for the game in Malaysia that not long into any footballing conversation, we will inevitably arrive at the oftrepeated but rarely resolved mystery of why Malaysia have never played in a World Cup tournament.

Lucius Maximus (a pseudonym) tries to shed some light on this “why” by answering the “how” in How Malaysia Never Reached The World Cup: Harimau Malaya’s 40-year Chronicle Of Failure.

The book, originally written in Bahasa Malaysia and translated into English by Adit Rahim, chronicles every World Cup qualifying game that Malaysia participated in since 1974.

The chapters are divided by each World Cup year, and ends with the scoreboard.

After a few chapters, the book becomes an iterative recital, with every chapter nar- rating Malaysia’s preparation for that year’s World Cup, the expectation of a nation, the confident start, the meltdown and the consolation.

This, however, is an outcome of commendable research, as Maximus provides interesting historical content that creates a feeling of nostalgia.

One of the most hard-hitting sentences of the book is in relation to Harimau Malaya’s struggle during the 1970s and 1980s, with the suggestion that “South Korea practically became synonymous with the failure of Malaysia to reach the World Cup”.

How far backward have we slid since that heyday, as we now struggle against minnows like Singapore, Taiwan and Bahrain while South Korea can claim a semi-final appearance in the 2006 World Cup as their best result.

Not having read the book in Bahasa Malaysia, I couldn’t help but wonder if some of the colloquial essence of the original text has been lost in translation.

For instance, in the introduction is a tongue-in-cheek suggestion to refer to the Malaysian football team if one wanted to know how it felt to “diligently focus” on a job without any results.

Though the translation served its purpose, the humour fell rather flat.

For ardent fans of Malaysian football, the book is a great treat, with the exploits of legends like Mokhtar Dahari, Serbegeth “Shebby” Singh, Soh Chin Aun and Dollah Salleh dished out as we take a walk through the glorious 1970s and 1980s.

The book is also a startling depiction of what Maximus deems as “the rot” that has taken over the Football Association of Malaysia (FAM), and the author does not pull any punches when it comes to analysing the reasons for football’s downfall in Malaysia or criticising some of the controversial decisions made by the FAM’s powers-that-be.

He asks, “What has been done by those responsible all these years to halt the decline? Were they too busy snoozing on FAM’s plush chairs, oblivious to the rot that was happening right in front of their eyes?”

I think, though, that much more could have been said in the book about the deficiencies in Malaysian football schools, the infrastructure limitations, or the climatic or dietary influence on the levels of football in comparison with Europe and America.

The final pages feature a Q&A excerpt taken from an article posted on the blog TrankuilitiTronoh, which the author uses as his recommendations for the revival of football in the country.

Citing corruption, politics and mismanagement as the key issues, Maximus offers ideas such as club football as opposed to state teams as a catalyst to spur the growth of football in Malaysia.

He ends the book by borrowing a line from the John Lennon song Imagine: You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one.

He certainly is not alone in wishing that Harimau Malaya will roar again.