Youth and sports minister Reezal Merican Naina Merican said the ministry and the Malaysian Football League are currently fine-tuning the mechanism and standard operating procedures (SOPs) on stadium attendance.

The Sultan Ibrahim Stadium in Iskandar Puteri, Johor, and the Kuala Lumpur Football Stadium in Cheras will be the first two venues to have fans again on April 2 and 3 respectively.

Both stadiums will be used as a pilot project to gauge the effectiveness of crowd management protocols.

As both Johor and Kuala Lumpur have been placed under the conditional movement control order, the Sultan Ibrahim Stadium, with a 35,000 seating capacity, will see 2,000 fans while the Kuala Lumpur stadium, which can hold 18,000 people, will allow 1,800 fans.

Under the SOPs, the stadiums may allow 10% of the capacity.

Bernama reported Reezal as saying that the ministry would not bar Covid-19 high-risk groups from attending matches as there was no law to stop them.

However, he said children and those aged above 60 are not encouraged to go as they belong to the vulnerable group.

“So, a lot of things will be looked into carefully. Among them are the sale of tickets, which must be done online, operation of food trucks and the question of those attending the matches,” he said after a media conference to hand out appointment letters to the ministry’s “panel of experts” here today.

Reezal hoped the fans would follow all SOPs to convince the National Security Council (MKN) and the health ministry that the protocols put in place are effective.

“I can’t be the only one trying to convince the government, so I ask for the support of all in the sports fraternity to help bring back the fans to the stadiums.

“If the fans fail to convince MKN, it may not happen then,” he said.