Why a big win for Malaysia started a huge sport scandal - Asia Specific podcast, BBC World Service

It's hardly a football powerhouse, but Malaysia is going. through a scandal that has shaken up the game in Asia. Football's governing body, Fifa, has accused. the country's football association of forging documents. of seven foreign born players so they could play for the national team. Malaysia's football association denies the allegation, but the entire executive committee has resigned. It's not over. It's been very messy, very ugly, very embarrassing, not only for Malaysian football but for Asian football generally.

And the scandal has prompted a bigger discussion in Asia. about what it really means to play for your national team. I'm Mariko in Singapore and this is Asia Specific from the BBC World Service. Twice a week we bring you Asia Pacific stories. unpacked by those who know them best. And today I have Steve Lai. So, Steve, you usually present. the BBC News Channel's Newsday programme out of Singapore in a suit, but today he's in a polo shirt to those who are listening.

He used to be also a sport presenter and I also have Neil Humphreys. He's an author and sports columnist. Being based in Singapore for 30 years. and the two of you used to appear on (a) sport podcast together. Thank you so much for joining me on Asia Specific. My pleasure. Yeah, great to be here, Mariko. It's getting the gang back together to talk sport. I taught him everything I know. It took me two minutes. Yeah, two minutes, and I was done.

Well, before we begin a full disclosure, I know quite a bit about Japanese football. That's where I grew up and that we have a pretty strong team, both men's and women's. I interviewed some of the female players. My knowledge for football is quite limited on South East Asia, but this scandal in Malaysia, this seems quite a big deal. So Neil, can you firstly unpack what exactly happened? So last year there were seven players who were fast tracked,

foreign born players who were fast tracked to play for Malaysia, and they did subsequently play, and they played. a very important Asian Cup match against Vietnam and they won four nil. And several of those players featured, I think one of them even scored. And it's important because Fifa after the match came back and said, hang on a minute. We're very unhappy with the application process. And they claimed that the seven foreign born players had had. their grandparents birth certificates either changed or falsified in some way,

and as a consequence, Fifa kicked the seven players out. They were given a one year ban. The Football Association. of Malaysia was fined and that appeared to be the end of it. But recently the Court of Arbitration for sport, commonly known. as CAS, has now repealed those bans so they can now play again. for their clubs, whether they can play again or not. for Malaysia, that still depends on Fifa, but it's not over.

It's been very messy, very ugly, very embarrassing, not only for Malaysian football, but for Asian football generally, because it just ties into that stereotype again, that we're still a little bit backward, we're still quite archaic, and our football infrastructure development and so on. And it it just taps into all. of the negative stereotypes about Asian football. Yeah. And part of the reason why it raised so many eyebrows. was they won four nil and they hadn't beaten Vietnam since 2014.

So it was quite a big sort of change in what had happened. And you know, when you see the faces all lined up, it also didn't, you know, it raised quite a lot of eyebrows. Yeah. Because the guys who played some. of of them, I think Portuguese background, I'm going to say Spanish background. Yeah. There's Brazilian. Brazilian background. When it appears to be the case that you have no tangible connection. to the country you represent, at least according to Fifa, because you falsified the grandparents birth certificates.

It's just ugly. Just to clarify though. So who exactly are accused of this? The seven foreign born players or Malaysia's football association. The association okay, because the association filed the request. this fast tracking process to citizenship. And according to Fifa, it's the Football Association. of Malaysia that submits these documents. And on these documents, Fifa claim again that the grandparents of these players,

because they were going in as heritage players, which usually means. either a parent or a grandparent in this case has to have been Malaysian. Fifa have claimed that the documents that were submitted. to Fifa were falsified. So what was Malaysia's Football Association's response to that allegation? Well, the Football Association of Malaysia, they said that there was an administrative error or. they were sort of deflecting as to, or they certainly weren't acknowledging. the fact that they had done anything wrong on the player's part.

Some of their lawyers did. They came out to say that. the players submitted the documents that were requested, and then it was all processed and submitted through FAM. and not something that they had necessarily eyes on, and that the contracts that they had signed were in in Malay, in the Malay language and wasn't something that they could understand or verify. Essentially, they're sort of pleading ignorance to the whole thing. So as Neil said, it's a pretty messy situation. But I guess it all comes down to how South East Asian nations,

I think it's fair to say, haven't been able to produce a very strong team. with their own homegrown players. Why is that? Is that because of the lack of investment, the lack of talent? Well, this isn't like something that's wholly restricted to South East Asia, though. I mean, countries all the way up the ladders of football do it. It's not something uncommon, but it does happen here in Southeast Asia. And I guess it becomes a bit more obvious. when it's something that is happening sort of for the first time, people aren't so familiar with with that, with that sort of process.

Here's the problem that Asian football has. There's this fascinating situation that played out at the turn of the century. So English football, in particular the English Premier League. But European football more generally exploded across Asia. because of two reasons the internet and cable television. They rose in tandem across Asia. So football developed this global popularity and Asian popularity. that it had never seen before. Great.

For many Asian nations, football is the number one sport. Singapore, Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, Japan, South Korea. Broadly speaking, it's the number one sport. So you would think that as the popularity booms, there'd be a rise. in talent that runs alongside. It didn't really happen. For all the reasons you've alluded to, lack of infrastructure, lack of support. And I'm quite sympathetic towards Asian football on this. because you forget European football, South American football, they have 100 years of legacy heritage building infrastructure building.

that Asian nations, particularly South East Asian nations don't have. So what do you do? Asian mindset. Well, we can build the number one airport. We can build the number one port. We can build MNCs. We can build a football culture overnight. Well no you can't. It's an organic thing that takes decades, if not centuries to build. Yeah. And it's always going to be the case where nations want to be able to compete. and players want to be able to play at the highest level they can. So you kind of have this meeting point of players that want to play.

at the best level that they can and are willing to, you know, represent a country that they may not have such close ties with. because they want to have a shot at playing in the Asian tournaments or, and, you know, get a leg up or might be playing in like a lower league. in the UK, but you know, they have an Indonesian grandfather. or something like that, and it makes them eligible to play for Indonesia. And then, you know, why wouldn't they want to represent a country. that they have a connection to? And I think that's fine.

I think that's fine. I think what this recent story has shown is this fascinating paradox. between what the foreign talent scheme is and who it should involve. Because to clarify, for our broader audience, there are actually two kinds of foreign athlete, foreign born athlete. There's the naturalised foreign athlete or foreign sportsmen. Now, those are people who are generally not born in the country, don't have any connection to the country, but have played a sport in that particular country for a few years. And then the sporting authority has looked at them.

and said, this is a talent. Let's fast track them to citizenship. so they can play a sport for our country. That's one. The second one is the heritage player, the mixed heritage player. Now that I believe is very, very different. And the Philippines are kind of leading the way on that one. Yeah. And the Philippines have three obvious advantages due to their colonial history. The first is they have a huge migrant population across the world. There are Filipino communities across the world in large numbers,

so they have a potential talent pool to tap into. That's number one. Number two, and this is key. The Philippines allow dual citizenship. Other nations don't. Singapore doesn't. Indonesia doesn't. Malaysia doesn't. For adults. So a Filipino kid growing up in the US or the UK or Europe. has one Filipino parent and one Western parent. They don't have to choose citizenship. That's number two. Number three. And this is key. The Philippines have this law. They call it the, I think, the rule of blood.

Meaning if you have a Filipino parent, you are automatically. a Filipino citizen no matter where you are born in the world. They don't even use the term foreign talent. They use the term overseas Filipino player. I can understand how South East Asian governments haven't really invested that much, but China has been pouring quite a lot of money into the industry, and yet it seems to be plagued with scandals, allegations of corruption. and so on. So what's going on?

I don't really see a political or a social will driving China. towards a project like Japan, like South Korea, even like some of the nations in South East Asia. Let's not forget, the number one sport is still table tennis. It's still table tennis. Football is developing. Even when the Chinese league was set up and all that money was put in? They pumped. Well, now we are going to get political, aren't we? I don't know how much this will go in, but we will get political. Yes. There was a change in a direction towards more foreign investment.

And then a few years ago that was all pulled out. So once that pulled out, once you took the money away. Yeah. What was left? That talent pool of sort of aging superstars went. to the Middle East, went to Saudi Arabia. So they lost that. But when it comes to corruption in football, I mean, Africa has it, other regions have it too. And yet they still manage to produce pretty strong teams. So what's especially South East Asia lacking. Are we lacking?

I mean, you know, we were talking earlier about the lack of investment, and I was talking to a colleague who was saying in women's football, Asian teams are actually doing a lot better. because European countries actually haven't been pouring. in a lot of investments so far in women's football. So it's a bit more kind of equal field. But when it comes to men's football in Asia, what's the problem here? You know, if corruption can't be the only thing. I'll answer that right now.

If you line up 100 Chinese parents in this room right now and say, hands up, who wants their son or daughter to be a professional sportsperson, none of them will put their hands up. If you line up 100 Western parents. American, European, South American, African and say, who wants their child to be an athlete or a professional sportsperson? Nearly all of them will put their hands up. That Asian sense of education first, career first, stability first.

Sports is fickle. Sports is precarious. There is no guarantee of a career in sports. So you're not just talking about all the issues we have discussed so far. How do you change a mindset of a billion people? Several billion people if you take the whole of Asia? Good luck with that. I don't know how you do that. Yeah. And a lot of it is as well the alternatives, right? Like in where we are, we're very fortunate to have alternatives. when it comes to, you know, where are you going to study. What are you going to do? You know, what career are you going to have? A lot of countries, I mean, you see all the superstars.

in Brazil that you hear about and then you hear about their, origin story, and it comes from the street. It comes from the desperation of of having, you know, it's a way out. I noticed when I was covering the Rugby World Cup in Japan in 2018, the Japanese national team, they did incredibly well. I think they surprised everyone. But when you look at the the national team players, many of them were also not just foreign born,

but they had no biological relationship to Japan. So Steve, you used to play rugby for the national team of Brunei. Did you know that? I do because. he mentions it. every five minutes. Steve - I played for Brunei - Lai. Yes. And we have pictures. There you go. Young Steve. You know, when people pull out pictures. of their kids, he pulls out pictures of himself playing rugby. That's what he does. Harsh. How long ago was this? Uh, 2006. Yeah, a long time ago. Yeah, 20 years ago.

Wow. We were in Cambodia playing against, in a tournament, playing against Indonesia, Laos, and Cambodia. And these issues that we were talking about with football. And you mentioned the Japan national team. Well, they're prevalent at all levels. I mean, I was playing in in the team for Brunei. You can see an expat there playing for Cambodia, I think it is. And and they had like five or six expats in their team. So why is that? Are the rules a lot more relaxed compared to football? Well, back then I think it was three years residency and you. could play for for the national team. Do you have to be a citizen?

No. Not necessarily. So rugby was a bit more relaxed. I think those rules have been tightening up now in Japan as well. They've been tightening up as well even just to play club rugby in Japan. And that's to safeguard the throughway for Japanese players to come through. So it's been always this balancing act of, you know, we'll relax the rules because we want to encourage more people to play. and we want to lift the standards, and then we have to tighten them again. when, you know, we want to safeguard as well the national interests. But what we've been talking about in football happened in rugby as well. It was interesting watching Japanese fans reaction when Japan did so well,

even though some of the players weren't born in Japan, had no blood relations to Japan. In terms of people's reaction, fans reaction, how do you think they think they feel about these foreign born athletes? We get too caught up with the foreign talent sports scheme, with the who and the what and the where. It's the how. How did they become a citizen in their adopted country? And I'll give you a very good example. So in 2012,

Singapore fast tracked some China born athletes into the table tennis team. And the Singapore table tennis team won Olympic medals in 2012, and it was a great sense of national pride and euphoria. Fantastic. But fast forward four years. Singapore wins a gold in swimming through Joseph Schooling. Now Joseph Schooling is Singaporean born and bred. It was different. The euphoria, the sense of unadulterated joy.

that the nation felt was higher than it was four years previously. with the two girls who had been fast tracked from China. And this is not a xenophobic thing or nationalistic thing or a racist thing. They were Chinese and Singapore is a majority Chinese country. I think the average sports fan is not stupid. They're not naive. They see if you're genuinely committed. or not to the national cause, whatever the sport. Conversely, there have been other footballers. in the past from other countries who have come in,

been fast tracked clearly to benefit themselves, fame and fortune. And then they've gone. And that leaves a sour taste. So I think fans are open to any foreign talent. if they, for two reasons one if they see the how, satisfy that criteria, and two, the why. Why do you want to play for our country? Are you sincere about playing for our country? Do you intend to stay here? Plant roots in this country or is it just fame and fortune? And then I'm gone. Nobody wants that in any sport, in any context.

And it's very clear. I think it's easier to see nowadays, like the intention of of how these things play out. I mean, with social media, people are posting, there's a lot more media attention. when it comes to sport, especially when it comes to the national level. So you can't sort of fake the sincerity for too long before you get found out. And I think that sincerity of of why you want to represent that country. is it will will shine through. Looking ahead to World Cup, no South East Asian countries have qualified.

What will it take? I mean, China missed out as well. But what will it take for those countries to make it one day? Pragmatism. I'll go first. I think the Filipino model is the way forward. I think they are the most likely. Stop the press. I actually think the Philippines long term has the greatest chance. of football success in South East Asia for this year. Yep, more for the sheer size of their global population, their dual citizenship rules, which makes it easier for players to come in and play.

And the fact that many of them grow up in different countries. and therefore go through the sporting infrastructure, the more developed sporting infrastructure of, say, Spain or the US and UK and so on. So I think the Filipinos have the right pathway if they can back it up. with investment and infrastructure. But personally, I would love to see Singapore qualify for the World Cup in my lifetime. I might have to live till I'm 172 years old.

But I've been asked this, I've been asked this. Someone said to me, would you rather England win the World Cup or Singapore. qualify for the World Cup? Hands down easy. I would rather Singapore qualify for the World Cup because it means more. It will mean more to Singapore. Well, you know, the good news is on that, Neil, is that Singapore has. a record of having the longest longevity of any country. So you know you're in the right place. If you. Want. To. If you want to see that goal. I would say, though, that it's going to be hard. I mean, it's not. like the rest of the countries in the world are standing still. I mean, the reason why countries bring in all this,

these foreign talents is to try and get ahead of the competition. So as good as the Philippines is getting as good as Indonesia. or any other country wants to get when it comes to football, the country's at the very top level, whether it's, you know, France, Brazil, the Netherlands, whoever. They're also moving forward with the standards of football. So, you know, you have to move quicker. So Neil thinks the Philippines will be the first South East Asian country to qualify. Do you want to bet? No, I do not want to pick a country. I'm hopeful. I'd like to say. But.

I just think it's just so hard. I mean, just the standard of football is so, so high, and there's just such a chasm to to overcome. I think it's going to be tough. But the way things are going at Fifa, they may eventually have 200 teams at every World Cup anyway. So so. Their. Rules change. That might be the best way of Fifa opens up the World Cup. You know, the finals as they call them to more teams. I think that that number of teams, it might come down close enough to. I foresee. Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand joint hosting. a World Cup. And they all qualify.

Maybe they should pitch it. Yeah. Why not? Well I've learned so much about football today. Thank you so much Neil and Steve. Thank you very much. Great to be here. Did you know he played for Brunei? Did you mention it? It's only because it's relevant to the story. That's the only reason I brought it up. Very relevant. You've been watching Asia Specific from the BBC World Service. with me, Mariko Oi in Singapore. If you have any questions or thoughts on what we've covered in this episode.

or any other stories from the region, please leave us a comment below. You can also get in touch with us on Email AsiaSpecific@bbc.co.uk. And you know the drill. Click like and subscribe so you never miss an episode. See you next time. Bye!