REPLY TO THE MALAY MAIL
I refer to the front page article in The Malay Mail today highlighting the National Football Development Programme in a way that was inaccurate at best and deceitful at worst.
"Hang your heads in shame!" screamed the front page headline of the paper, centering their sorry excuse for a journalistic exercise around the Mokhtar Dahari Academy, where the NFDP players are housed and train full-time -- except that they're not.
The basis of the article was how the fields in the Academy was left to deteriorate and rot when it was supposed to be the training ground for the cream of the crop in the NFDP, the most talented football players below the age of 17, ready for the world of professional football.
Matter of the fact is that these players have yet to even begin training in the Academy in Gambang. The Mokhtar Dahari Academy is not operational yet, full stop. If the writer would understand the structure of the NFDP and even bother to check with my office on the facts of the programme, he would know that the base of the NFDP players train at the various rapidly growing Akademi Tunas (for ages 7 to 12 years old) and the National Sports School, State Sports School and Pusat Latihan Daerah (for ages 13 to 17 years old) in all the states in the country. Meanwhile the "Projek 2019" boys who NFDP Project Director Lim Teong Kim is trying to groom for the Youth World Cup are now schooling and training full time at 3 National Sports School being SSBJ, SSTMI and SSM Pahang. This set of players for the Project 2019 programme gives NFDP an opportunity to work with a bigger pool of the top U13 prospects who will eventually form the squad vying for a spot in the U17 World Cup in 2019.
NFDP only utilises the fields in Mokhtar Dahari Academy to organise various age group tournaments, selection sessions and coaching courses normally from mid year onwards on an annual basis.
If the writer had bothered to ask anyone involved in the NFDP, he would have known that the ministry is about to award the tender for the second phase of construction for the Academy, and that work is about to start to include staff quarters, hostels, additional training pitches and a common building (for administration, management, and application of sports science among others).
Meanwhile, the maintenance of the current fields will be taken care of by NFDP beginning February 2015.
If he had bothered to do his homework, he would have known that the Academy won't start operations until 2016. If he had actually asked someone, he wouldn't have said that the pitches are currently used by the NFDP U-13 team and four teams from the Education Ministry in collaboration with FAM, because as far as I am aware, being the Youth and Sports Minister after all, the NFDP U-13 team does not train there. Also, the teams at Sekolah Sukan Malaysia Pahang prefer to train at the Academy pitches rather than their school fields.
Since the launch of NFDP by our Honourable Prime Minister in April last year, NFDP has been continuously introducing new methods and practices in order to raise the standards of coaching in the country. With every change, comes more demands and responsibilities which may not suit some coaches and this situation probably resulted in coaches leaving the programme. I am of the opinion that this is normal in any organisation that is trying to effect changes in the way we do things. We are setting new standards and casualties are expected.
While 'The Paper That Cares' was quick to brand NFDP as "false hope", the programme has earned praises from the football world including top European academies such as Sevilla, Real Madrid, Dinamo Zagreb, QPR, Spurs, Reading, Ipswich and BPL giants Chelsea.
A cursory glance at the NFDP’s Twitter and Facebook account would show that our grassroots development is well on track.
I would assume that 'The Paper That Cares' would actually care about getting their facts right. I suppose I've been proven wrong.
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