M-League football teams, struggling to stay afloat in a sea of debt, must stop treating the youth and sports ministry and state governments as cash machines.
Almost every team in the M-League claims to have suffered losses during the Covid-19 lockdown because of poor gate collections. But teams will lose out on gate collections only when they play in empty stadiums when the league resumes at the end of August. Kedah FA president Muhammad Sanusi Md Nor, who is also the menteri besar, said last Sunday that the state government cannot arbitrarily channel funds to settle arrears of salaries and other dues.
But when he took over as FA president, Sanusi must have known that it was his responsibility to settle the association’s liabilities. The Football Association of Malaysia has finally moved to end the role of state football associations, 26 years after football went professional.