20 Jul Najib predicted 6-0 defeat

It appears that Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak, like most Malaysians, had grown pessimistic about the quality of Malaysian soccer, which has been on the decline over the years.

This is why he registered surprised over the local team’s narrow 2-3 defeat to Manchester United in a friendly match in Kuala Lumpur yesterday. “We lost 2-3?. I thought we lost 0-6,” he said in jest when asked to comment on the match result at a press conference after he had an audience with King Abdullah Abdulaziz Al Saud, Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques, in Jeddah.

According to Bernama, when told that he had to miss watching his favourite team MU in action back home, Najib said: “This (the audience with King Abdullah) is more important.”

Manchester United played a Malaysian selection yesterday on the first stopover of their Asian tour which will also take them to South Korea and China. They will play another match with a Malaysian selection tomorrow after their friendly with an Indonesian selection in Jakarta tomorrow was cancelled following bomb blasts at two Indonesian hotels on Friday.