The Crown Prince of Johor has ruled himself out of the running for the country's top football job, saying he could not become the FA of Malaysia (FAM) president due to his passion for his home state.
The outspoken Johor Darul Ta'zim (JDT) owner, better known as TMJ, has been widely critical of Malaysian football bosses, vigorously questioning their integrity.
With FAM president Tengku Abdullah Sultan Ahmad Shah declaring he "is on his way out", the FAM door looked open for TMJ to take over, but the 32-year-old has shut the door on that possibility.
"I cannot become FAM president because I will be biased towards JDT. You can't have someone from the state FA to become president, you need to have someone who is neutral," said TMJ on the Obviously Harith Iskandar show on Saturday.
But TMJ did not discount the notion of becoming an advisor to the national body, a position from which he stepped down last year.
"The Youth and Sports Minister Khairy Jamaluddin is coming to see me to propose a few options that he has for me to get involved. For me to be advisor and share my views to improve Malaysian football, I don't mind," TMJ said.
The JDT boss also renewed his call for FAM's top brass to step down.
"You need people in FAM who can contribute to the football clubs and the national team. You need to set objectives and have targets, not aim for tournaments like the Suzuki (AFF) Cup which is not even a FIFA tournament.
TMJ, who has steered JDT to six trophies since rebranding it from Johor FC in 2012, also cited one of the success models for his team.
"We are still lacking in a lot of qualities in our football. That is why in JDT, we have a lot of foreign expertise. We need foreign expertise, the idea is to learn as much as we can, and later do it on our own," said TMJ.
"But in JDT we also give priority to our local players. When we won the league and AFC Cup last season, 60 percent of our goals were scored by the locals."
Having already won February's Charity Shield and May's FA Cup, JDT are still in the running for five trophies this season.
They are on top of the Malaysia Super League (MSL) but have made a poor start to their Malaysia Cup campaign. JDT are scheduled to play Hong Kong's South China in the AFC Cup quarterfinals in September, with a potential semifinal against Singapore's Tampines Rovers after that.