Perak FA's playbook: How to tank a club and start (badly) again

I am not sure I understand what strategy Perak FA has decided to deploy. Mostly, it seems to involve making the same mistakes we’ve seen before.

Last season, Perak Football Club (Perak FC) – entirely owned by XOX Berhad – found themselves in a bit of a pickle. We’re talking unpaid salaries, licensing nightmares, the whole sordid nine yards.

A financial hiccup, mind you, that while certainly not a picnic, was a stroll in the park compared to the abject misery festering at Kedah Darul Aman FC.

Now, Perak football isn’t some fly-by-night outfit; it’s a century-old institution, steeped in history, with fans who don’t just support the team – they bleed its colours. You’d expect their venerable parent, the Perak FA, to be scrambling faster than a startled cicak (lizard) on a hot griddle to throw them a lifeline.

Maybe a secret stash of emergency funds? A strategic partnership forged in the fires of desperation? A tear-stained, grovelling letter to the state government?

But no. Instead of rescuing their own struggling professional club – the very one holding the golden ticket to play in Malaysia’s top-flight league – Perak FA apparently decided to leave it to rot like an abandoned durian.

And for what, you ask?

To launch its own half-baked, semi-pro football team under the same state banner.

Haven’t we been down this pothole-riddled road before? The never-ending cycle of state-backed teams spending like drunken sailors, collapsing under mountains of debt, only to be “rescued” by some private white knight who quickly realises that professional football in Malaysia makes about as much commercial sense as selling ice to Eskimos.

And yet, here we are, watching Perak FA hit the repeat button on this broken record.

The opportunity for collaboration between Perak FA, XOX, and the loyal fans was ripe for the picking – a chance to actually do something different and inclusive.

And if the intention of reviving the association was largely political, a collaboration driven by inclusiveness and public ownership would certainly have gained mileage.

But no. The management seemed to prefer the sweet, familiar hum of their own self-inflicted misery.

Frankly, I would prefer if Perak FA had absolutely nothing to do with the cutthroat nature of professional football. It’s a jungle out there – a ravenous commercial beast that demands shrewd financial wizardry, sustainable revenue streams, and a hide thicker than a rhino.

Qualities that, let’s be brutally honest, are about as rare as a unicorn on a skateboard in the boardrooms of most Malaysian football associations.

Their true mandate – their actual reason for existence – should be far more fundamental, far more integral. They should be the fertile soil in which future champions take root and flourish, not the incompetent gardeners trying to grow a prize-winning tomato in a desert.

And there’s more. If these Perak FA officials are being financed by state funds – which, let’s not kid ourselves, most state football associations largely are – then they are, by definition, obligated to spend that money on public commodities.

It is not their personal piggy bank for vanity projects.

Imagine, if you will, the glorious revolution that could erupt if those precious funds were actually channelled where they belong: into grassroots football.

Into building and maintaining public pitches that don’t resemble a lunar landscape after an asteroid shower.

Into proper, cutting-edge coaching education for local volunteers who actually give a damn.

Into accessible, well-structured youth leagues that ruthlessly identify and nurture raw talent from the humblest kampungs to the bustling cities.

Into vibrant community programmes that get kids and adults outdoors, kicking a ball around.

This is public participation. This is investing in the future of the sport – not clinging desperately to a bankrupt model of the past like a drowning man to a broken twig.

It is the same perplexing, infuriating logic we see with our ministries, too. Take the Higher Education Ministry, for instance. Instead of investing in a comprehensive university football league that could benefit thousands of student-athletes and foster a formidable pool of “thinking” footballers, the ministry decided to blow their budget funding a single, solitary football team competing in a semi-professional league (Malaysian University Football Team in the A1 League). It’s like buying one ludicrously expensive designer handbag when your entire wardrobe is threadbare and riddled with moths.

The priorities are so skewed, it’s almost comical. Almost.

So, to all the football associations out there, I implore you: step away from the professional football circus. Leave the glitz, the superficial glamour, and the inevitable financial black holes to those actually built for that cutthroat world.

Go back to basics. Invest in the future. Invest in the kids. Invest in the community.

Because until you do, Malaysian football will continue to be a peculiar, infuriating, and ultimately, spectacularly underperforming spectacle.

And frankly, after decades of this nonsense, we damn well deserve better.

The views expressed here are the personal opinion of the writer and do not necessarily represent that of Twentytwo13.