Malaysian football still worried about FIFA's decision to lose 0-3 to Vietnam team

The ambiguity about the origin of naturalized players is the reason why Malaysian football is still worried about being severely punished by FIFA, losing 0-3 despite beating Vietnam 4-0 in June, and being eliminated from all tournaments.

According to the New Straits Times on July 2, the President of the Football Association of Malaysia (FAM) Joehari Ayub once again explained the question of whether the origin of the naturalized players of the national team is valid or not. Accordingly, Mr. Joehari Ayub affirmed that the 5 naturalized players of Malaysia completed the procedure last June, were examined by FIFA and their backgrounds are completely valid. He also confirmed that FAM has no reason to hide any information.

Malaysian football is still doubtful about whether the player naturalization policy is valid or not - Photo: Ngoc Linh

"We do not take this matter lightly. FIFA has checked everything and at FAM, we only follow the procedures and instructions set by them. If we need to release information, we do not hesitate to do so," Mr. Joehari Ayub emphasized to the Malaysian press at a press conference after the FAM extraordinary congress on June 30.

"However, until now, the debate about the ancestry, lineage, and connection of the recently naturalized players to Malaysia has not subsided. In fact, this is an unusual situation, something that Malaysian football has never experienced before. Many Malaysian fans cannot pronounce the names of their national team players, some have problems remembering the players' faces and where they come from," New Straits Times expressed.

Also according to the New Straits Times , although FAM affirmed that FIFA has checked everything, the problem is that until now they have kept all information about the lineage of the naturalized players secret. From there, many people suspect that this agency is deliberately covering up something unusual, or they do not know, because they have to go through an intermediary organization to search for and naturalize the recent foreign players for FAM at an extremely fast naturalization speed.

Why does no one know about the origin of naturalized Malaysian players?

FIFA has punished many cases of using players in violation of regulations or illegally naturalized. The most recent case is the case of Equatorial Guinea player Emilio Nsue, who was not eligible to change nationality (from Spain) but still played in the 2026 World Cup qualifiers in Africa. As a result, Equatorial Guinea was punished by FIFA with two group stage matches with the same score of 0-3, despite having won Namibia and Liberia with the same score of 1-0. Player Nsue is currently banned from international competition for 6 months, while the Equatorial Guinea Football Federation was fined 150,000 Swiss francs (about 4.95 billion VND).

In Southeast Asia, the Timor Leste team was also heavily punished by FIFA in 2017 for using 12 Brazilian players who did not meet FIFA's naturalization requirements for many consecutive years. Timor Leste football was punished with a 0-3 loss in matches involving the players who violated the rules, banned from participating in the 2023 Asian Cup qualifiers, and banned from naturalizing foreign players for 5 years...

This is the reason why the football public in Malaysia is still very worried, because they do not know the true origin of the recently naturalized players, including 3 players of Argentine origin, 1 of Spanish origin and 1 of Brazilian origin, specifically Imanol Machuca, Rodrigo Holgado, Facundo Garces, Jon Irazabal and Joao Figueiredo.

These players have helped the Malaysian team significantly increase its strength when it defeated the Vietnamese team 4-0 on June 10 in the 2027 Asian Cup qualifiers. "In fact, up to now, FAM has not revealed the lineage of these naturalized players or said what their relationship is with Malaysia. Therefore, the incident has caused fierce debate until now. If FAM has covered up the origin of the naturalized players, even accusing them of fraud and falsifying documents to deceive FIFA is true, it will be an extremely big scandal," Malaysian newspapers commented.

Source: https://thanhnien.vn/bong-da-malaysia-van-lo-bi-fifa-xu-thua-doi-tuyen-viet-nam-0-3-185250702225111842.htm