Football Association of Malaysia (FAM) and Malaysian Football League (MFL) have only just completed a series of discussion with Professional Game Match Officials Limited (PGMOL) as the governing body of football in country and the league is working hand-in-hand to alleviate the issues pertaining to the match officials.
In a video press conference done directly from London, the panel of representatives included Datuk Wira Yusoff Mahadi, Stuart Ramalingam, Kevin Ramalingam, Md Dali Wahid and Kassim Kadir Bacha fielded questions from the attending media at FAM headquarters.
It was revealed that a new company known as Professional Match Officials Malaysia (PMOM) has been created and registered that will form the basis of this new development for the match officials going into the future.
"This initiative is done to learn how about the development, training and protection of referees from PGMOL. We will not be importing the whole PGMOL system directly but we will study and take what is good to fit into our own ecosystem."
"Here in England, they have a pathway from the age of 16 to the Premier League and we don't have that in Malaysia. They also have an evaluation system of referees using new forms and criterias that was interesting to look at," said Stuart in the press conference.
The PMOM is a joint venture between FAM and MFL with the search for a General Manager currently on-going. It was also announced that the referees' performance in the domestic competitions will be assessed until July this year to see if there's any suitable candidates that can be offered a professional contract, they will form the first batch of referees with PMOM.
In the meeting in London, the panel spent time meeting with Richard Beeby, the Head of National List Performance at PGMOL as part of the information sharing. The move to upgrade local referees to a higher stature and capability is seen as a direction in the right way given how much scrutiny the local referees are getting for their performances in recent seasons.
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