World football’s governing body FIFA has taken disciplinary action on Football Association of Malaysia (FAM) as punishment for the crowd trouble that forced the World Cup qualifier match against Saudi Arabia on September 8 to be abandoned.
FAM was notified today on the sanctions, after investigations of FIFA’s Disciplinary Committee showed FAM was “responsible for the spectators behavior.”
As a result, the national team’s next home match – a World Cup qualifier match against United Arab Emirates (UAE) on November 17 – will be played behind closed doors.
FAM, in return, were fined 40, 000 Swiss francs (RM 174, 800) and issued with a strict warning.
In addition to that, the committee also decided that the abandoned match will be declared as forfeited by Malaysia 0-3.
For the record, the incident occurred after the 0-10 devastating lost to UAE, in a match where Malaysia were down 1-2 against Saudi Arabia.
With few minutes remaining, the “Ultras Malaya” – group of hardcore supporters – fired flares of orange smoke around the stadium as players and officials were rushed out of the field, causing the match to be stopped immediately.
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