KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia League (M-League) teams have been reminded not to make a ‘wrong step’ in signing foreign players for the coming new season.
Action Football Asia managing director, Effendi Jagan Abdullah explained that all teams need to do their homework and find out as much as possible beforehand about a foreign player that they are interested in before putting pen to paper to avoid facing problems of the player underperforming or not playing up to expectations.
He said this following many cases in the M-League prior to this which has seen foreign players who have been signed up struggling to perform apart from being injury prone and out for long periods until they have to be dropped.
“Teams must do their homework and find out as much as they can about a player that is offered by an agent. For example, where an attacker or forward is concerned, they need to look at everything including how many goals has the player scored on average over the last couple of seasons.
“What’s most important that needs to be double checked is whether the player has had any serious injuries to avoid the problem of the player’s injury reoccurring and being out on the sidelines for long periods after being signed.
“Imagine if a player gets injured after being signed, the team will have to bear a huge cost to offload the player and to get a new player which would be a loss financially,” said Effendi who has 15 years of experience as a players’ agent.
Apart from this, Effendi also revealed that there are a few means used by M-League teams to sign foreign players.
He said, the most popular means used by teams in the country is to test a player they are interested in via friendly or pre-season warm up matches.
“There are players who are tried and tested over at least three matches before they are signed up. But then there are also cases of players who have been signed without being put to the test, though usually this is because such players are known and have made a name for themselves playing in a better league which also means such players come with a hefty price tag.
“However, both these means of signing foreign players cannot run away from the fact that teams need to make sure that the players they sign are indeed their monies worth,” he said.