Here we go again. Like clockwork, the Terengganu Football Association (PBSNT) has emerged from its a...
Here we go again. Like clockwork, the Terengganu Football Association (PBSNT) has emerged from its annual hibernation to announce that Terengganu FC will, against all its highly publicised wishes, grace the Malaysia Super League (MSL) yet again next season. Queue the collective, exhausted sigh from Kuala Terengganu to Chukai.
For five straight years, the suits in the boardroom have treated us to the same tired, off-key mantra: “We want to privatise. We want to sell.” It is a masterclass in bureaucratic theatre. They sit back, feet propped up on inherited desks, waiting for some mythical corporate white knight or a bored billionaire to magically knock on the door and swallow their liabilities whole. Let’s call it what it is: corporate delusion wrapped in a flag of state pride. Intention is not a strategy. Wanting to sell a football club by simply announcing your desire to the press is like sitting in a warung and expecting a plate of nasi dagang to fly into your mouth because you looked hungry.
Let’s inject some cold, hard corporate reality into this circus. When I took the wheel as CEO of Perak FC in 2022, the club wasn’t just sinking; it was a structural shipwreck. Yet, we didn’t spend half a decade crying into our tea about how hard privatisation is. We executed a complete takeover by XOX Bhd in less than 60 days.
Why did it work? Because we didn’t waste time haggling over arbitrary, inflated valuations born out of boardroom vanity. We focused on aggressive execution and absolute structural transparency. Private capital does not operate on bureaucratic time. It does not wait for committee meetings to approve the minutes of the previous committee meeting. It moves when it sees a runway, not a roadblock.
The typical football administrator loves to hide behind the excuse of “market valuation” as if they are trading tech startups on the NASDAQ. Let’s demolish that fantasy right now. In a sports M&A exercise, a buyer does not buy hope, and they certainly do not buy your historical trophy cabinet. A buyer buys clarity.
If a club’s financial disclosures are a riddle, its liability audits non-existent, its vendor contracts scribbled on the back of receipts, and its asset registries a tangled mess of red tape, smart money walks away. It’s called structural readiness. Investors demand a pristine, comprehensive data room from day one. They want to see every single sen accounted for, every outstanding salary logged, and every potential litigation mapped out. When you present an institutional investor with a black box and expect them to sign a check based on “passion,” you aren’t just insulting their intelligence; you are proving your own incompetence.
What PBSNT fails to grasp is that time is a predator in corporate finance. This five-year paralysis introduces severe transactional drag. When negotiations stall because a club isn’t data-ready, the balance of power shifts violently. The buyer smells blood in the water.
Every month you drag your feet trying to locate old player contracts or clear up opaque tax liabilities is a month the buyer uses to build leverage. By the time a deal actually approaches the finish line under these conditions, the seller is desperate. The result? You get backed into a corner and forced to accept highly unfavourable circumstances:
By failing to prepare, you ensure that even if you do sell, you will still be paying for the ghosts of your past mismanagement for a decade to come.
While the bigwigs play their endless game of administrative musical chairs, the real tragedy unfolds at the grassroots. Terengganu is a state teeming with football obsession, yet its lifelines are being choked. The upcoming Kuala Terengganu League this June, alongside countless local youth initiatives, is left to starve for funds and scrape by on crumbs.
Why? Because the state’s resources are locked in an endless loop, clumsy carrying the immense financial burden of a top-flight MSL giant they repeatedly claim they don’t want to fund. It is a grotesque misallocation of capital. We are sacrificing the future of local football sovereignty to subsidise the institutional inertia of a boardroom that refuses to do its homework.
So here is my advice to the leadership of PBSNT or any other CEO or owner of a football club, free of charge: Stop the press conferences. Stop the hand-wringing. Stop treating privatisation like an existential mystery that requires a spiritual awakening to solve.
Tomorrow morning, clear out the filing cabinets. Audit the books to the last cent. Build a bulletproof liability registry. Put together a clean, professional data room, hand the keys over to serious investors, and step aside. If you lack the stomach or the competence to do that, then do us all a favour: shut up, stop pretending you actually want to sell, and admit that you just prefer the comfort of the status quo.
