KUALA LUMPUR, Feb 1 — The decision of the Malaysian Football League (MFL) to allow teams to start a match with six imported players for the 2024-2025 Malaysia League (M-League) season is detrimental to local players.
Former national defender Razman Roslan, who is also the vice-president of the Professional Footballers’ Association of Malaysia (PFAM), said the MFL’s decision would make it difficult for local footballers to get in the first XI, thus reducing their playing time and affecting their chances of representing the national team.
“This is very detrimental to the local players; we have a lot of talent to develop, actually,” he said after launching the women’s football development programme by PFAM and international sports brand Adidas today.
Razman, a former Selangor FC player, feels that coaches prefer to use the services of imported players, although not all of them are of real quality.
“But maybe for us as a professional league that wants to play in the Asian Champions League (ACL), we need this (six imports in action).
“I think the MFL have to do (follow accordingly). To be honest, it hurts the local players,” he said.
Malaysia has already proven its ability to produce top players like Mohd Safee Mohd Sali and Norshahrul Idlan Talaha to the extent they were able to win the Asean Football Federation (AFF) Cup, even though at that time, the services of imported players were not used.
Earlier, the MFL had maintained the quota of nine imported players in the registration for the 2024-2025 season, and only the teams competing in the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) competitions, namely the AFC Champions League Elite (ACLE) and ACL 2 as well as Asean club competition (AFF) were allowed to register one additional import player.
However, after receiving requests from several clubs and getting approval from other M-League clubs, the MFL announced the additional quota of one more import player on the field for the 2024-2025 season.
This sees the 2024-2025 season quota agreed by all teams: six imported players (ie 4+1 (Asia) +1 (Asean) allowed to be on the pitch at any one time with one more import on the bench.
— Bernama
