Do you know this guy? He is Mokhtar Dahari. The most top Malaysian football player at old time. This is the text about him that i have read today.
The current Malaysian football scene is nothing short of rubbish, were sitting something like 160th position in the FIFA world ranking(there are about 190 seeded countries) . The nation would claim that football is our no 1 sport despite the lousy condition of the national team. This is probably because its our most watched sport(English Premier League’s,EURO,World Cups etc) . Take a walk at the streets, you’ll see more Everton shirts than a Malaysian national team shirt(don’t get me started on the Man U’s and Liverpool’s) .What do we watch since we have a team that suffer to beat countries like India which playing the marbles is above football in their favorite sports list.
It never has been always this bad, at one point Malaysia was considered to be a Asian powerhouse. At that time there weren’t any professional players. The players all had full time jobs and played football simply because they loved it and every time they put on the national shirt, it was a matter of pride!!
One of the stars of yesterday was Mokthar Dahari .He made his national debut at the age of 19 and represented Selangor for most of his career where he went on to win the Malaysia cup 10 times.
SuperMokth as he was famously known was part of a powerful Malaysian team which was also represented by goalkeeper R Arumugam, defenders Santokh Singh and Soh Chin Aun, midfielders Reduan Abadullah and Shukor Salleh and Mokhtar’s partner upfront Isa Bakar.
During the 70’s Malaysia team beat Arsenal & England team where he scored a spectacular goal,dribbling it from the middle to score at the other end.
He was blessed with such skills but at the age of 37,Supermokth passed away of muscular dystrophy on 11 July 1991. Tt here have been all sorts of rumors about how he passed on but fact was that he was sick.
Since then Malaysia have never had a team which came close to the passion, drive and hunger to emulate the success of the 70’s national team. We have a bunch of spoil professionals with access to such high tech training methods and programs to ensure they are on top of their game but for some reason, they prefer the nasi lemak and night life.
I hope someday, something happens and our local football take a drastic change for the sake of the nation..I hope i get the opportunity someday to shake the hands of these stars who made us proud!
I do hope that we could produce someone like him someday and we will be proud with our football. Just like old time.
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