That's it. Our tournament's over, forever to be remembered by Malaysians for the one team that managed to truly disgrace itself: our own. The final stats show twelve goals conceded and only one scored. We were Malaysian, we may as well have been the Philippines. Standing in Queen Street Mall watching the Malaysian players aimlessly amble about was like getting dental. They didn't so much tackle as sail past on an assymptote. The defence, again and again, was exposed for what it was: a shambles. Having lost 5-1 to China and 5-0 to Uzbekistan, the only thing coach Norizan Bakar could hope for was the players to not humiliate themselves again.

In the event we lost, 2-0 to Iran, putting on as tigerish a display as is possible with six defenders and one defensive midfielder. All the same, it was a much-improved performance, the midfielders snapping successfully into tackles and for once managing to string good passing moves together, albeit to the general direction of nowhere. The question begs to be asked, how is it we can lose 5-0 to Uzbekistan, all respect to them, and only 2-0 to Iran? The same Iran team which is currently, in terms of players in Europe, general track record and World Cup experience, the most successful team in Asia? A team which, even without the great Daei, still had the likes of Karimi, Kaebi, Zandi and Rezaei to cause any team no end of problems, let alone a walkover team like ours?

I think personally it was all down to mindset. Apparently Norizan knew before the Iran game he was sacked. The players knew it too. Beforehand there was much talk of pride redemption, staying strong in the face of the criticism which admittedly was much-deserved, and responding in the best possible manner. Sure we'd lose, but not in the way we lost the previous two games. It got me thinking, if we could sufficiently psyche ourselves up to lose with dignity in one game, why can't we for every game? Certainly we weren't expecting to progress from the group, but if we had put in as much effort into both the previous games, who knows? The fact remains that all the other hosts have acquitted themselves well with supposedly bigger names, and even the Vietnamese, traditionally one of the weaker teams, have made the quarterfinals.

Malaysia are thus far the only country I know to have demeaned host advantage into insignificance. If the players, and the administration, were smart they'd take a few cues from the Vietnamese and the other hosts, even the South Koreans in their run to the semifinals of the World Cup. Instead we were atrocious to the point that we couldn't even rely on fortune or a biased referee to save us from a pasting. We probably wouldn't even have been able to buy our way out of trouble. We couldn't have bribed a ref without making it look unconvincing. Indeed a ref'd probably go "Fix the game? What with this bunch? They're barely playing anything near enough to merit it!"

The whole situation just points to the ultra-defeatist mentality of the footballers as well as the administrators. It was evident no one was even bothered contemplating putting in a good show. The problem was Malaysia were bad and knew it, so they played with no motivation. Consequently they were unable to gloss over the years of flawed administration, poor player development and inadequacies of the system they were unfortunate to be part of. When it came down to it, every attempted airkick clearance, misplaced pass, misfired shot and late dive told the story of a country whose football, and in many ways, the society around it, has, and is, going steadily downhill, with no one and no system available to stop the rot. In a way, this debacle, this humiliation of preposterous immensity, is exactly what we need.

We were shite. That's all it was, a shite job by a group of players you could only pity the same way you pity a peg-legged bum in the street: cold head-shaking, with the knowledge that they couldn't do anything more, that despite all your pontificating, ranting, even token coin-dropping, you couldn't change things, and no one ever could. Malaysian football is in a sad, sad state, and tonight summed up everything about us in an inglorious rotten nutshell.

We were great once. So were many countries, they had great players too. France had Fontaine, Papin and Platini. Did they roll over and die? No, they put in a system designed to utilise a positive progressive mindset and groom superstar players from grassroots level, blooding and breeding players like Zidane, Henry, Makelele and Vieira. Uruguay had Franscescoli, today they have Recoba. Argentina had Kempes, Maradona, Passarella; today they have Tevez, Messi and Mascherano. England had Moore, Hurst and Greaves, and today Rooney and Neville grace the scene. Even Northern Ireland, who once had the likes of Best in their ranks, have produced at least one decent player in David Healy. Have Malaysia moved on up from the days of Mokhtar? No. Of course not. We've moved down, endlessly spiralling into oblivion, shoulder-rubbing with Kyrgyzstan, Bahamas and Seychelles in the FIFA rankings while the likes of Equatorial Guinea, Azerbaijan and Mauritania have climbed above us. Even that little self-ingratiating pimple on our sorry sore rear end, Singapore, has risen to 131st in the world, a full 19 places.

We used to trash Singapore, now we revel in even getting away with a 1-1 draw at home. We enjoy home advantage in a tournament we have no decent right competing in and got hammered in our own citadel [more like Barbie's Pony Castle] 5-1 by a Chinese team featuring three Premier League scholars and various European-based upstarts [our definition of 'internationally experienced' is two guys in a German second division team and a crocked striker who couldn't get a reserve game for Strasbourg]. Coach and players alike talked big about causing an upset, and had two goals scored against them by a guy named Wang [talk about getting your first-class dicking]. We were outplayed so comprehensively the Chinese coach could afford a sarcastic backhand by suggesting his team lost discipline in allowing us to score our one goal.

Don't blame the players, blame a poorly-run, defeatist system, for two decades administered by self-obsessed fanboys who couldn't amble up a gentle incline, let alone run a football association. Relatively speaking the players aren't all that bad, some're almost half-decent. None of them however are competitive material. If China's players were stainless steel, Malaysian players would be wooden boards, part single-ply matchwood, part amalgamated sawdust.

We speak of the glory days of Mokhtar Dahari, Santokh Singh, Soh Chin Aun and R. Arumugam, and long for the time when names of such stature would ever rise again. As a member of the current football-watching generation, I can only advise this: stop hoping. Malaysia's football is a shambles, a hopeless wreck cast away into an eternity of false hopes and languid periods of cynicism and fatalistic underachievement. The current management would do no better than to take us to the very bottom, at least with the knowledge that from then on the only way left to go is up, if even that'd ever eventuate. Bring on Guam, Cambodia [can we play you every week?] and American Samoa. Malaysia officially did worse than a team of literally nobody [who lost 1-0 against Chile in 1973], the national football team sucks, big time, no one is available to stop the rot, and frankly no one cares. Forget the spirit of Supermokh, he's forgotten us long ago, up in Heaven, bless his soul, playing kickabout with people worthy of being called true footballers.