The Malaysian football scene is currently less of a sporting arena and more of a crime scene where the detectives are tripping over their own yellow tape. With the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) finally handing down its verdict on the seven “instant-Malaysian” stars and the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) stripping their wins against Vietnam and Nepal, the air is thick with the smell of scorched reputations and the desperate search for a villain. 

Predictably, the fingers are pointing south, towards Johor Darul Ta’zim (JDT). It is a classic Malaysian pastime: when the national house burns down, blame the neighbour with the most expensive lawn. But let’s pause this outrage for a second and perform an autopsy on the facts. The reality is that JDT is guilty of nothing more than being a well-oiled machine in a forest of broken gears. They didn’t break the system; they simply operated within the system that was already bent on its own destruction by the suits in Kelana Jaya.

Of course, the fire was stoked to a white heat by Romain Molina, the investigative football journalist who took pleasure in pointing out that our footballing emperors are, in fact, stark naked. Molina’s “exposé” acted as the ultimate social media accelerant, transforming the naturalisation mess into an international punchline. While his revelations sent JDT into a frantic state of damage control, the public reaction was characteristically shallow. Instead of diving deep into a discourse analysing the systemic rot Molina highlighted, the masses took the bait and turned his remarks into a partisan weapon to bash the Southern Tigers. It’s much easier to tweet about a “Johor conspiracy” than it is to confront the reality but then again, the frantic response from the club wasn’t very helpful as well.

The heart of the “Blame JDT” manifesto hinges on the fact that three of the seven players—Joao Figueiredo, Hector Hevel, and Jon Irazabal—are wearing the Southern Tigers’ jersey. Critics look at this and conveniently see a conspiracy, as if the club’s headquarters doubled as a basement for forging birth certificates from the 1950s. This narrative ignores the blindingly obvious: (1) it was the Football Association of Malaysia (FAM) that sat in the driver’s seat of this train wreck. (2) FIFA didn’t fine a club; they slapped a RM1.9 million fine on FAM. (3) CAS didn’t dismiss a club’s appeal; they threw out the FAM’s desperate attempt to justify “administrative adjustments” that were, in plain English, document tampering. 

When the FAM approached these players in early 2025, dangling the carrot of international football and “heritage” status, they weren’t acting as JDT’s errand boys as many would claim. They were acting as a desperate national body trying to buy a shortcut to the 2027 Asian Cup. The players, as CAS noted with a touch of legal shade, were “complicit” in their own laziness—signing papers they didn’t read and claiming grandparents from places they’d never knew existed. JDT didn’t need this scandal to dominate the Malaysia Super League (MSL); they were winning titles back when these players were still trying to find Malaysia on a map. And in the AFC Champions League Elite (ACLE), your roster can entirely be donkeys.

The calls for AFC and MFL to forfeit JDT’s MSL and ACLE matches are particularly hilarious when you bother to examine the rulebook. In the ACLE, the AFC has effectively legalised an “open border” policy, removing foreign player quotas entirely since the 2024/25 season. Even if the Home Ministry decides these seven men are as Malaysian as a Dutch stroopwafel and yanks their passports, it wouldn’t change their eligibility for the ACLE. They would simply transition from “fake locals” to “legal imports.” Demanding forfeitures in a competition where the rules literally say “bring whoever you want” is the height of informal fallacy. 

As for the MSL, the players remain eligible as locals until PDRM concludes its investigation and sends the report to the Attorney General Chambers (AGC). In the eyes of the law, a blue IC is a blue IC until the state shreds it. To demand a club to shoot itself for the sluggishness of a police investigation is a move that is as legally illiterate as it is emotionally desperate. JDT didn’t grant the citizenship; the government did. JDT didn’t verify the ancestry; FAM claimed to have done that. Expecting a club to act as a moral arbiter over and above the national registration system is a standard we apply to no one.

Being the biggest, richest, and most successful club in the region makes you an easy target, but it doesn’t make you the mastermind of a bureaucratic mayhem. If we want to fix Malaysian football, we need to stop staring at the trophy cabinet in Johor and start looking at the paper shredders in Kelana Jaya. JDT isn’t the villain; they’re just the only ones who remembered to read the rules while everyone else was busy faking footnotes. The outrage is real, but directing it at the Southern Tigers isn’t just lazy—it’s an admission that you’ve been fooled by the zookeepers of the circus.

Related column(s):

Hostages of the Haze: Why JDT is Paying the Price for Bukit Aman’s Bureaucratic Siesta

Skidmark on My Silk Underwear: Mourning the Naturalisation Mess While Celebrating the Masterclass