July 19, 2009

the neverending malaysian footie rant

Do you guys remember my great big treasure hunt from before?

3 years ago, I found it virtually impossible to land my hands on a Malaysian jersey, and now, I still pretty much found myself in the same problem as before. The day before the big game, I embarked on another treasure hunt to find the new design jersey to wear for the game. Yes, I maybe a Manyoo fan, but fuck that shit - I am a Malaysian first and foremost.

Anyway, after running all around town like a headless chicken trying to find the mythical jersey, I found myself in Midvalley where the first obvious choice to look was the Nike store. Nike are the makers of the jersey, so what better place to start?

But I was wrong. Nike was busying whoring the new Manyoo kit which they conveniently launched 2 days before the start of their Asian tour. The whole front portion of the store was filled with the Ultraman look-a-like jerseys and the walls were adourned with posted of Manyoo players in the new kit. Among the posters was that of one Danny Welbeck (wot!?!). When I approached one of the sales people, he told me that they had ran out of stock for the Malaysian jerseys. "When is stock coming in?" "Dunno lah."

So, I went next door to Studio R, where the Malaysian jersey was tucked in some obscure corner (but at least they had it). I asked the bloke if they had a lot left and he said there were tons left in the storeroom. In fact they were flogging off the jerseys at a 30% discount, which made me think that the Nike store's 'out of stock' story is absolute ballocks. It was not 'out of stock'. Quite simply, Nike didn't stock it anymore and much preferred to flog off the Manyoo jerseys to suckers who call themselves Manchester United 'fans'.

Who do you blame here? Do you blame the idiots who preferred to pay upwards of RM250 everytime Manyoo launches a new jersey but refuse to pay RM180 ONE-OFF for their own national team jersey? Or do you blame Nike for not doing enough?


After the exploits of the previous day, it came no surprise to me when I went to the stadium the next day to find myself surrounded by thousands of idiots in Manyoo jerseys. I parked quite a far distance from the stadium, and joined the crowd in walking there. There were thousands of people around me all dressed in RED and I felt like an outsider wearing the Yellow and Black stripes. It almost felt like I was in Manchester and going to the stadium to support the away team.

Only after about 15 minutes of walking and near the stadium did I see the first guy (besides myself) wearing the Tiger Stripes. I walked up to him and said, "Bang, lawanya baju...." He smiled back.

Put it this way lah, it is a bloody travesty to go watch your OWN national team and support anybody else. If you could afford to pay money for your Manyoo jersey (fake or otherwise), then you can also surely afford to pay money for a Malaysian jersey. And I don't care if you cheered for Malaysia when they scored...if you were wearing a Manyoo jersey, that's already considered a grave offence. That's pathetic glory hunting - to support both teams at the same game! And no matter what people want to say about cheering for the Malaysian team, it cannot be denied that the biggest cheers were saved for the team in RED, not our local team.

The next thing that really annoyed me was when the teams walked out on the pitch. WHY THE FUCK WAS MALAYSIA DRESSED IN BLUE? We are the fucking HOME team, yeah. The home team wears their HOME colours. The away team has to accomodate to make sure it doesn't clash. Malaysia' HOME colours are yellow and black and obviously somebody decided that that clashes with Manyoo's RED. So instead of asking Manyoo to change to their away kit, we had to accomodate them?! What the fuck is this shit? Was it because they wanted to flaunt their new RED jersey?

Then, came the most pissing off part.

Near where I was sitting, there was an old man (wearing a pink long sleeved shirt and immaculately pressed long pants). He didn't bother sitting - he spent the entire time on the terrace steps and he spent the entire 90 minutes shouting. Not occasionally, not just when the action was going on. He was shouting NON-STOP throughout, "Come on Malaysia, come on!" He kept repeating it over and over again like CD player going on loop. In between that, he would burst into a rant about something random "Keeper tinggi tapi bodoh" or "Kalau orang Malaysia tak nak sokong Malaysia, buanglah IC".

Now, I thought this was fantastic since it added to the whole atmosphere, but people around were annoyed at him. As early as 5 minutes into the game (hence 5 full minutes of "Come on Malaysia, come on) people around me were making snide remarks of "Oh My God why won't he stop?", "Shit that guy is irritating" and "He must really like Liverpool" After the girl behind me remarked for the 20th time to her father, "Why won't he shut up?" I turned around to her and told her, "because this is how REAL football fans are"

Instead of cheering their own team (Malaysia), people come donning jerseys in support of Manyoo, and even then also fail to give proper support (no singing of songs, only cheering when Manyoo play well) and these idiots don't even recognise what real fans are about. These are the so-called Manyoo fans who cheered crazily for Micheal Owen and gave a muted response to Neville and Scholes. Fuck you people man. As much as I want Owen to succeed, he has done NOTHING yet. Giggs got the biggest cheer of the night (and rightly so) but for any Manyoo fan to cheer Owen (even sing his name before the game starts, chant his name when he came on, and chant again when he took his medal) is just plainly disrespectful towards people who have given their all to the club like Paul Scholes and Gary Neville who were given the silent treatment.

And of course, the rest of the disgusting behaviour of Malaysians like boo-ing their own national team. Some people tried to defend the booing by saying that the boos were only reserved for some really bad passing. I agree, the boos were only heard when the passing was real bad or when Malaysia were reduced to taking pot shots from outside the box. But that logic doesn't hold water because for much of the night, Anderson's passing was rubbish and he was robbed off the ball many, many times. Tosic was doing jackshite on the left wing and nothing was made of Owen missing a clear chance when unmarked in the 6 yard box.

After the final result, instead of praising the Malaysian KIDS (KIDS, yah, not the full strength squad) for their gutsy performance, many morons started mouthing off about 'Manyoo give chance' and 'Manyoo show face'. Get trashed and people will ridicule you and your whole family. Get a good result and people say that you were given face. With that kind of attitude why would kids grow up wanting to play football for their country?!

With this kind of attitude from Malaysians, is there any more mystery who Malaysian football is in the doldrums?

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