YOURSAY | Kicking around more taxpayers’ money for elusive goal

YOURSAY | ‘There are plenty of people in sports who can help, but they are never asked.’

COMMENT | Rewarding mediocrity recipe for poor outcomes

VioletOrca0545: The current problem is the RM15 million allocated to the national football team.

There is no point in plucking a number from the sky and throwing it at the problem. Do you want Malaysia to succeed in football or not?

Set aside a huge sum, get some people with real brains to come up with a solid 10- to 15-year plan and execute it.

Learn from Japan. Make football the centre of activity for schools and the community. Establish more youth training, boot camps, scouting programmes and so on.

At the halfway point, we relook at the plan and plot it further down another 10 to 15 years.

Football sells, it’s the sport with the highest viewership and sponsorship in the world.

If you want to be in the game and achieve something in it, then you had better be prepared to spend and spend because the competition is fierce.

With so much money involved, you had better make sure corruption does not creep in, especially at the top level.

After all that, maybe in two decades or more, we will see some results.

Why do you think Brazilians are so good at football? It’s the only sport their children get to play. It’s in their blood.

BluePanther4725: Malaysia should disband its national football team.

The huge amount of money wasted on the team should be used instead to help the poor and improve our healthcare system.

Our country doesn’t need a national football team. We should just admit that we are not good at football.

Concentrate on the sports we are good at such as badminton, hockey, squash and so on.

Racism, corruption and cronyism breed mediocrity and low performance, and if mediocrity were an Olympic event, Malaysia would win gold.

MarioT: This is the only country that honours failures. When government-linked companies fail, don’t worry, the government will not abandon them.

No questions are asked, more money will be injected to save face. Malaysia Airlines has been in the doldrums for so long, but who cares? We keep feeding it to save face.

Our soccer and hockey national teams are a disgrace. We just change the coaches, retain the same underperforming players, and pump in more money.

Libra: Having walked the path from pre-1970 to 1970, both as a participant and as an official in sports, I can justifiably say that sports culture has taken a turn in favour of the privileged class and popularity, and is more oriented towards politics than the reality of a sports culture.

Why do you think football and badminton seem more attractive than other sports?

Bill Price: Malaysia does not need money to fix its football woes or problems in any sport for that matter. It needs new ideas, something the country is lacking in many areas. Instead of throwing money at a problem, take a fresh look at why the country is unsuccessful.

There are plenty of people in sports who can help, but they are never asked and the same people who have always run sports associations make the same decisions that have not worked time and time again.

A Better Msia: @Bill Price Is football suffering because of politics? We need a new mindset and not throw good money away.

This is very much like what Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said about saving MAS. How many times are they going to do it?

How much money is pumped into each round of restructuring? How many cronies have had lucrative contracts? Our main problem is there is no accountability.

Apanama is back: Malaysiakini columnist R Nadeswaran, the prime minister and his cabinet members are mediocre. So what do you expect them to do? Of course, they reward mediocrity.

It is as simple as that.

St Lucia athlete Julien Alfred won the gold medal in the 100m sprint at the recently concluded Paris Olympics.

Alfred won with a time of 10.72, a personal best and a national record.

Her country is poor and she trained herself to run barefoot. At one point, she did not have money to buy running shoes.

There are many tales about poor athletes who overcome the odds to win gold medals at the Olympics.

But back here, we wasted millions of taxpayers’ money but nothing is achieved besides being kind to them.

Dummies Dhimmi: It’s a Malaysian sickness.

Somehow the government thinks that placing the carrot before the donkey forces it to work.

Giving the donkey the carrot, he would eat it and sit on his behind and wait for more. We just did it with government servants, and now our football team.

Now invite other ways to get them to move. How? The carrot, strategically placed, is the proverbial motivator.

GreenHare9358: There was a time not too long ago when our Malaysians-only teams were feared by the Japanese, South Koreans and other top Asian countries.

Until someone came along with his “Malaysia Boleh” mediocrity and pulled down our standards. And this, after spending huge amounts of money on world-class facilities, imported players, incentives and so on.

Bravemalaysian: The national football team certainly does not deserve this reward for their mediocrity and lack of integrity.

There are so many other sports more deserving of this money and support. I hope the government will reconsider this silly decision.

Mechi: We did not succeed previously because politicians took over sports associations and let them crumble, like what happened to sepak takraw and football.

Meritocracy took a back seat. Politicians believe in quantity, not quality. They should be removed from sports associations.

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