Tobias Zuser

Opinion | Recognising Malaysia’s Soh Chin Ann as the world’s most-capped footballer is long overdue – as is Fifa’s nod to the Olympics

Soh’s 195 validated appearances aren’t just a record, they provide an insight into the importance of football to national identity in postcolonial Asia

He was part of teams that twice qualified for the Olympics – a non-Fifa tournament – and helped bring Malaysia’s multi-ethnic reality to the foreground

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Malaysian footballer Soh Chin Ann has 195 recognised international appearances. Photo: Twitter

Tobias Zuser

Published: 6:00pm, 15 Aug 2021Updated: 7:52am, 16 Aug 2021

Earlier this month, Fifa, the governing body of world football, released an updated list of their Century Club – an exclusive honour roll for players that have represented their nation at least 100 times. While familiar names such as Spain’s Sergio Ramos and Cristiano Ronaldo of Portugal have cemented themselves among the ranks of the top 10 most-capped players in the world, the new No 1 was a bit of a surprise.

Malaysia’s Soh Chin Ann has finally been recognised for his achievements, close to four decades after his retirement in 1984, with Fifa validating 195 of his 222 recorded international appearances. This puts Soh 10 games clear of runner-up Bader al-Mutawa, a still-active Kuwaiti footballer who is on track to inherit the top spot.

The honour was a long time coming for Soh, but so was Fifa’s indirect acknowledgement of the importance of football in the cultural fabric of postcolonial Asia – where sport has long been a fertile ground for nurturing national identity. Players such as Soh became national role models, no small feat during the early years of independence; he earned his first cap for the national team in November 1969, at the age of 19, just six years after Malaya, Singapore, Sarawak and North Borneo united to become Malaysia.

Needless to say, Soh has for decades been a footballing icon in Malaysia and Southeast Asia. However, as an ethnically Chinese Malaysian – a group which today makes up less than a quarter of the country’s population – his career path was probably as unusual in the 1960s as it would be nowadays.

Early on, he had to endure the careless misspelling of his name in the Malaysian and Singaporean press, where he was often referred to as “Soh Chin Aun”. There are whispers that the media may have regarded “Ann” as too feminine a name for a male player at the time, though the fact that journalists didn’t bother to correct the mistake points to an overall sense of indifference. But Soh focused on his performances on the pitch, which soon earned him a reputation as an outstanding defender for club and country.

Soh Chin Ann during his time at Selangor. Photo: Football Association of Malaysia

A recurring theme in Soh’s memories of his glory years is how his race didn’t seem to matter to his teammates – to which the success of the Malaysian national team arguably contributed as well. This is not to say that discrimination was non-existent in society at the time. Rather, it was the juxtaposition of unity between sportsmen and the conflicts of everyday life that brought the multi-ethnic reality of Malaysian identity to the foreground.