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.