A TRUE legend who seldom loses his cool, Fandi Ahmad did not mince his words in a post-match press conference recently.
The Pahang coach was left fuming with the standard of refereeing which he described as biased after his team’s 3-1 defeat to Johor Darul Ta’zim (JDT) at the Sultan Ibrahim Stadium on Tuesday.
Fandi, who was the legendary figure Tunku Ismail Sultan Ibrahim turned to in 2012 to kickstart his football project, was particularly miffed with the three yellow cards shown to his players while none of the JDT players were booked despite the tackles made by both teams.
“I am being frank. I am most displeased with the referee. These days football is becoming like rugby,” he was quoted as saying.
But Football Association of Malaysia (FAM) Referees’ Committee chairman, Datuk S. Sivasundaram, was quick to defend his men.
“Reports from the Referee Assessor confirm that both the referee and VAR officials excelled in their roles during the match. Their decision to award a penalty in the 90+4 minute and issue three yellow cards were both accurate and aligned with FIFA’s laws of of the game and VAR protocols,” said Sivasundaram in a statement.
The performance of Malaysian referees has been thrown into question yet again, which reminds me of the proposed structure for match officials that has yet to see the light of day.
In early 2019, the FAM and Malaysian Football League (MFL) as the league operators completed a series of discussions with England’s Professional Game Match Officials Limited (PGMOL) with the idea of establishing a new structure for match officials.
The intention was to pave the way for a higher qualify and standard of refereeing in domestic competitions by identifying a pool of professional referees.
In a video press conference streamed directly from London, the panel of representatives included FAM deputy president Datuk Wira Mohd Yusoff Mahadi, the then FAM general secretary Stuart Ramalingam, MFL CEO Kevin Ramalingam, Md Dali Wahid as the FAM referees’ chairman and FAM head of referees’ unit Kassim Kadir Bacha. They fielded questions from the attending media at FAM headquarters.
It was revealed that a new company known as Professional Match Officials Malaysia (PMOM) had been created and registered that would form the basis of the new structure.
The delegation came to a conclusion that England offers a pathway from the age of 16 to the Premier League while PGMOL adopts an evaluation system of referees using new forms and criteria.
The PMOM was supposed to be a joint venture between the FAM and MFL to be managed by a general manager and later on to identify suitable candidates to be offered professional contracts as the first batch of referees under PMOM.
Elevating the standard of refereeing was seen as a logical move given how much scrutiny the local referees were put under in recent seasons.
With the FAM elections just around the corner, perhaps the affiliates might consider getting a former referee back into the executive committee.
In the 2017 elections, respected former FIFA referee, Subkhiddin Mohd Salleh, was installed as the chairman of the referees committee following his election as an executive member.
However, Subkhiddin resigned after he was criticised for the poor refereeing quality of the 2018 Malaysia Cup final between eventual winners Perak and Terengganu.
If football’s stakeholders are serious in elevating the standards of refereeing, they might want to consider getting the likes of Nik Ahmad Yaakub and Amir Shariffuddin Wong into the decision-making process.
