Recently, Malaysia (yellow shirt) won against Laos with a score of 5-1 at Bukit Jalil Stadium - Photo: FAM
On October 17, author Nadeswaran of Malaysiakini newspaper said that FIFA's investigation is just the tip of the iceberg.
Accordingly, the hidden part is the network of people who benefited from the massive naturalization of 7 players, including Facundo Garces, Rodrigo Holgado, Imanol Machuca, Joao Figueiredo, Jon Irazabal, Hector Hevel and Gabriel Arrocha.
Malaysiakini questioned that it was hard to believe that Football Association of Malaysia (FAM) officials personally searched for the ancestors of these players.
“This could only be the work of a boss pulling the strings for a broker who was paid handsomely to create fake Malaysian genealogies,” the article asserted.
When FIFA released detailed evidence on October 6, it was determined that FAM had submitted fake birth certificates regarding the birthplace of the grandparents of seven naturalized players. Specifically, FAM reported that their grandparents were born in Malaysian states. Meanwhile, the original documents obtained by FIFA showed that they were all born abroad (mainly in Europe or South America).
Under pressure from the public, FAM justified the situation by saying that it was an “administrative error” caused by an employee “mistakenly downloading a document from a representative”, instead of one issued by the National Registration Department (NRD). However, this justification quickly collapsed when the NRD admitted that it could not access the original record, but only issued a copy “based on secondary evidence”. This showed that the entire chain of documents was unreliable.
The newspaper stressed that the cost of buying these seven naturalized players was not small. It could have amounted to millions of dollars based on the usual brokerage commission. "Someone was laughing on the way to the bank. Was taxpayer money used to fund this scam?", Nadeswaran asked.
He recalled that Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim had announced a budget of 30 million ringgit (about 7.1 million USD) to develop the team, of which half would come from the state. Therefore, Malaysiakini called on the Ministry of Youth and Sports to force FAM to open its spending books.
From the pride of victory, Malaysian football has now fallen into a crisis of confidence. FAM says they were cheated, but public opinion believes that it is a lax, unsupervised system that has created opportunities for "brokers" to make money. Meanwhile, the honor of national football has been severely damaged.
“In this story, the only real winner is the broker,” the article concluded.
Source: https://tuoitre.vn/nghi-an-ong-trum-thao-tung-vu-malaysia-gian-doi-nhap-tich-20251017101441479.htm
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