PJ City confirm withdrawal from Super League

PETALING JAYA – Petaling Jaya (PJ) City FC have finally confirmed their withdrawal from the Malaysia Super League in 2023.

Club president Datuk Seri Subahan Kamal said the restructuring of the Malaysian League (M-League) next season would not align with their goals.

The Malaysian Football League recently announced the expansion of the Super League, and one of the revamps includes increasing the quota for foreign players from five to nine players.

PJ City has been known, since the 2021 season, to be the only team in the M-League’s first tier with a fully local squad.

“Looking at the football climate moving forward, I think the board (of directors) was in a very difficult situation deciding on this,” he said.

“I think we came to our practical sense that it is not going to be easy for us to compete with that kind of football environment because having five (imported players) is already difficult, but now we have more?

“We set up PJ City FC with the intention to have only local players so that we will be able to feed quality players to the country, which we did, such as Darren Lok, Kalamullah Al-Hafiz Mat Rowi, V. Ruventhiran, and Kogileswaran Raj.”

Subahan was speaking to the media at the club’s press conference at QI Tower here, which was also attended by PJ City’s chief executive officer S. Ganesh.

Subahan also assured that the club's withdrawal had nothing to do with financial issues.

“We are proud to say that we are one of the best-run clubs in the country. 

“We have been paying salaries on time, we do not have any debts, the players are happy, and the management was run extremely professionally.

“We will still want to contribute to the local football scene by grooming and polishing them and when they are ready, we will feed them to the national football team,” he added. – The Vibes, November 11, 2022