KUALA LUMPUR: Former FA of Malaysia (FAM) treasurer Tan Sri Mohamad Noor Abdul Rahim believes that the cash-rich national body should not be getting funding from the government.
It was reported that FAM received around US$7.6 million (RM35 million) through Fifa's Forward Development Programme from 2016 to 2022.
The world body, which is expected to earn US$11 billion from 2023 to 2026, had said that under its Fifa Forward 3.0 programme, each member association would receive approximately US$8 million over four years.
In 2022, Datuk Seri Ahmad Faizal Azumu, who was the Youth and Sports Minister then, awarded RM10 million to FAM to help with operational cost after the Covid-19 pandemic.
With the Fifa windfall, Noor feels that FAM is in a good financial position, and they don't need assistance from the government.
Noor, a renowned sports administrator who had served several states, national and Asian sports associations, said the smaller national sports associations need the funding more than FAM.
"I think FAM has sufficient funding from Fifa to run their programmes and operations.
"They get millions of dollars and I don't think that they need any more financial assistance from the government," said Noor who served as FAM treasurer from 2006-2010.
"The situation is difficult for less popular sports. They struggle to get funding and without funding they cannot run training programmes or competitions and the athletes could not perform well and this results in more funding cuts."
"It's a vicious cycle, I'm with the Malaysian Boules Sports Federation now. For the Sea Games last May, we had to resort to crowdfunding to get funds for our petanque athletes to compete in Phnom Penh.
"Most smaller sports associations share the same fate as us, it's difficult for us to continuously produce results with insufficient funding."
Noor said that investing in football only results in a single gold medal while sports like petanque could deliver multiple gold medals due to the diverse events.
"If we look at football, they could only deliver one gold medal in tournaments, but sports like swimming, lawn bowls, bowling and petanque could deliver more gold medals with lesser funding," said the former Olympic Council of Malaysia vice president.
"We need to be cost-effective with the funding from the government... I hope the government will be smarter with their decisions on funding after this."