Football Malaysia Limited Liability Partnership’s (FMLLP) chief executive officer, Kevin Ramalingam insists that the Malaysian League’s tight footballing timetable can’t be avoided as all the matches have to be completed by November.
According to Kevin, the schedule is tight because of the delay to the start of this season, after most of the matches from last season had to be called off due to the haze.
Besides that, all of the league games including the FA Cup and the Malaysia Cup have to be played by November to accommodate the AFF Suzuki Cup.
“The tight schedule was not caused by the league matches and the Malaysia Cup being played simultaneously, but it’s due to the late ending of last season.
“At the same time, we have to finish the league in a short period which is by October. There were no matches played on January and during Ramadan, while November and December will be occupied by the AFF Suzuki Cup.
“So based on all these factors, we were handed the impossible task to complete all the league matches including the FA Cup and Malaysia Cup in such a short amount of time,” he told Utusan Online.
This statement came after the rise of complaints from Super League and Premier League coaches who lamented that their players were playing below par due to fatigue after facing such a gruelling schedule.
Kevin also added that FMLLP tried to ease the situation by allowing clubs to register 30 players instead of the usual 25, and to remove the limit for including youth players into the senior squad.
“We have given the chance to each team to enlarge their squad. Before this, only 25 players can be registered but we have increased the limit to 30 players now.
“Besides that, we also removed the limit for youth player registrations, as only six of them were allowed to join the senior squad in last season,” he said.
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