It can’t be easy to move house, club, town, and country all at once. Even more difficult, when you are going somewhere thousands of miles away, with a totally different culture, climate, language, and you are the only one from your roots to be playing there.
It is like Garcia Marques wrote on his book, “hundred years of solitude”. But that is football, a short career, where you must take every opportunity life gives you to make sure you can earn enough to support your family today, but also to retire happy or secure financially.
Most players in Argentina have dreams of playing in the big leagues in Europe to cement their names, collect trophies and medals, and move into management after their playing days are over.
But then, there are also the realistic guys, who appreciate that they are better than the average guy, but not enough to make it in the big time, so they search for other solutions, other ports, other leagues.
Like in most places in the world, football arrived in Malaya (Malaysia) with the Brits in the 19th century.
Quickly it became the most played game in all clubs in the territory. However it was very unorganised, even when their first amateur league took place in 1905 was just for clubs in the Kuala Lumpur area.
In 1920, the battleship HMS Malaya visited the country. After engaging local opposition in football and rugby, the officers and men of HMS Malaya decided to commemorate the matches by presenting trophies for annual competitions in both rugby and football in Malaya.
In 1921, a national tournament featuring all the states that made up Malaya was started. The competition, known as the Malaya Cup (later renamed the Malaysia Cup in 1963), has been continuously since then, except during the war years.
In 1926 the Selangor Amateur Football League was established, and in 1936 the Football Association of Selangor was formed and this association soon started organizing tournaments and this inspired other states in Malaya to follow suit.
In 1926, the Football Associations of Perak, Selangor, Negeri Sembilan, Malacca and the Singapore Amateur Football Association, came together to form the Malayan Football Association (MFA), in order to field a Malayan team against an Australia side that visited Singapore that year.
In 1933, the MFA was revived to form the Football Association of Malaya (FAM). Initially, the FAM was based in Singapore. It was chiefly responsible for the running of the Malaya Cup competition. The annual tournament – played along inter-state lines – was a huge success.
The first president of FAM was Sir Andrew Caldecott followed by M.B. Shelley, Dr. J.S. Webster, S.D. Scott, R. Williamson and Adrian Clark, who served up until 1940 – before Europe went on a full-scale war with Germany. In 1940, control of the FAM moved from Singapore to Malaya, with A.R. Singham becoming the first Asian secretary in 1941.
The FAM's first president after the war was J. King, to be followed by H. Byson, and then Dr. C Rawson, who served for two years before vacating for the first ever non-British personality to take over the helm.
In 1951, Tunku Abdul Rahman (who was to become the first Prime Minister of Malaysia) became the FAM president. It was under Tunku Abdul Rahman that football in Malaysia entered its next phase, with the FAM taking a much bigger role than just being the backbone in the organisation of the Malaysia Cup.
The FAM was inducted as one of 14 founding members of the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) in 1954, before becoming a full-fledged member of FIFA two years later.
Following the change in name to the Football Association of Malaysia in the early 1960s, Tunku Abdul Rahman continued to play a big role in the development of the game through various youth competitions.
Arriving to club competitions, the structure is rather complicated. There are 3 major trophies to be won by the teams in Malaysia football competition which are Malaysia Super League, Malaysia Cup and M
Malaysia Super League
A football league competition involving the representative sides of the state football associations was first held in Malaysia in 1979.
When it began, it was intended primarily as a qualifying tournament for the final knock-out stages of the Malaysia Cup.
It was not until 1982 that a League Cup was introduced to recognize the winners of the preliminary stage as the league champions. Over the years, the league competition has gained important stature in its own right.
After chopping and changing systems many times, the current structure that started in 2007 and until now, the professional football league in Malaysia was only divided into 2 levels whenMalaysia Premier League combined into 1 level:
First Division: Malaysia Super League
Second Division: Malaysia Premier League
Malaysia Cup It is a highly-prestigious annual soccer tournament in Malaysia. It is currently the longest-running football competition in Asia.
The competition is currently played at the end of each year's football season, and is contested by the 16 most successful teams in Malaysia's football league of that year.
FA Cup It is a national knock-out soccer competition organized by the Football Association of Malaysia. This trophy was introduced in 1990.
The Malaysian national football team (Malay: Pasukan bola sepak kebangsaan Malaysia) nicknamed Harimau Malaya, as the Malayan Tiger, is the national team of Malaysia and is controlled by the Football Association of Malaysia (FAM). Before 1963, the team represented the Federation of Malaya and was known as the Malaya national football team.
To date, the most significant successes of the team has come in the regional AFF Suzuki Cup (formerly known as the 'Tiger Cup'), which Malaysia won in 2010 for the first time in history. In 2010, Malaysia beat Indonesia 4–2 on aggregate in the final to capture the country's first major international football title.
At the moment they are ranked 148 on the FIFA rankings, and to put it into European perspective that puts them above Andorra and San Marino.
We did call this blog a hundred years of solitude, because when we started writing this article there was only one Argentinean player that was going to be playing in Malaysia’s Super League, but we have just learnt that another countryman has just agreed to join the same team. So we have now two.
Felda United FC:
New clubs, founded in 2007, has just finished 11th on the 2011 season and has resorted to recruit 2 foreign players in order to help them climb the league table in 2012.
Carlos Madeo:
He started his youth development and first team experience playing for Deportivo Moron, from Moron, in the Province of Buenos Aires. He then played for a year in Olimpia in Paraguay, then returned to Argentina for a short return to Deportivo Moron, before moving on to play for El Porvenir eventually landing in All Boys.
With All Boys, he won promotion to the Nacional B and then to the Primera Division.
He is a tall defender, 30 years of age, who likes getting forward and scoring goals as well. Many times, he has played in midfield as well. In 280 appearances with all clubs he has played 280 games and scored 16 goals.
He will be lining up alongside another experienced player from his country.
Santiago Bianchi:
A fine 28 years old striker, who has even won a title in Argentina in 2005 when playing for Velez winning the Clausura tournament.
While in Velez, he had loan periods with Quilmes, Oriente Petrolero (Bolivia), Tiro Federal and Platense.
By 2007 he joined Pontevedra in Spain, but after a year returned to Argentina to play for Atlanta to continue his rollercoaster career in Ecuador (Olmedo), Greek 9th division (Aias Slamina) then in the Italian serie D (San Benedettesse), serie D of Brazil (Mixto Esporte Clube), and finally in 2012 he will be playing for Felda United in Malaysia.
Speedy, skilful striker, he likes running at the opposition. He has played 111 games in all clubs and scored 24 goals, with 63 assists.
Also incredibly 2 more have just signed for teams in lower divisions of Malaysia
Bruno Bartelotto (29, Midfielder, played in Argentina, Chile, Italy, Greece, and Malaysia)
Juan Arostegui (31,striker, played for Boca, the Argentinean U20-at the times of Riquelme and Veron-, Malaysia -twice before now-, Mexico, Chile, Italy, Spain. Total 241 games, 93 goals)