NATIONAL TEAM HISTORY

HISTORY OF NATIONAL TEAM

Malaysian team had been structured by the FAM while before 1963 . The meaning of this body is to classify Malaysian Football Team and to organize major soccer tournament within the country. Football arrived in Malaya with the British. The locals soon chosen up the game, and before long it was the country's leading sport. Towards the end of the nineenth century, football was one of the central pillar of most sports clubs in Malaya. 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. While the Selangor FA was moving towards organised football, and inspiring other states in Malaya to follow suit, the battleship HMS Malaya visited the country in 1920. In 1926, the Football Association of Perak , the Football Association of Selangor, the Football Association of Negeri Sembilan , the Football Association of 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 Australian side that visited Singapore that year.In 1933, the MFA was revived to form the Football Association of Malaya (FAM). It also signalled the birth of the Merdeka Tournament(Pestabola Merdeka), that was to all intents and purposes the centrepiece of the independence celebrations. 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. Following his departure in 1974, the reins of the FAM was taken over by Malaysia's second Prime Minister Tun Abdul Razak , who served for just one year. His Royal Highness was integral in the growth of football in the new era with the introduction of the semi-pro league in 1989 before the game went fully professional several years later. Among the high points in Malaysian football under His Royal Highness was the successful hosting of the 1977 FIFA World Youth Championship, as well as the organisation of the Premier League, which has been called the Malaysian Super League since 2004.