In a statement, the football body’s secretary-general Hamidin Mohd Amin blamed the Malaysia Organising Committee (Masoc) for the SEA Games as well as the youth and sports ministry for the incident.
“I would like to clarify that all tickets for football and futsal events for the 2017 SEA Games, including the final match for the men’s football event, are under the management of Masoc and the youth and sports ministry, not the Football Association of Malaysia (FAM) or Football Malaysia LLP (FMLLP).
“As a representative of FAM, I regret there are certain quarters who still blame FAM for the sale of tickets,” he said, adding that FAM was only involved in the technical aspects of the football and futsal matches.
Yesterday, it was reported that over 5,000 Malaysians who queued up for hours were left disappointed after the tickets for the final between Malaysia and Thailand were sold out.
A scuffle also broke out when unhappy fans charged at the gates although Federal Reserve Unit personnel, who were on standby, were able to defuse the situation.
Addressing the fiasco, Youth and Sports Minister Khairy Jamaluddin took to Twitter to explain that tickets were initially planned to be sold online, as was done for the semifinals.
“On the issue of the football final tickets, we had intended for some to be sold online. That was the practice for all games before the final,” Khairy tweeted.
However, the night before the tickets were sold, Khairy said he was informed that the online payment gateway provider could not guarantee a stable process because of the sheer volume of users.
“They were concerned people would transact payments and not get tickets because of the sheer volume. They could not guarantee stability,” Khairy said.
He added that after assessing the information received, it was decided that tickets would only be sold at the match venue until all was sold out.
“I had a decision to make with the information given to me. Without a stable online payment gateway, a decision was made to sell all at the SSA (Shah Alam Stadium).
“At SSA, we sold all tickets until it had to be suspended when the barricades were breached,” Bernama reported the minister as saying.