The Malaysian league was only contested professionally since 1994, but one former Malaysia star revealed he began playing fulltime a decade earlier.
When a promising player has proven himself at the youth, amateur or semi-professional level, the professional stage usually beckons, where he gets the opportunity to fully concentrate his time on footballing endeavours, his attention undistracted by the need to earn his living elsewhere during the day.
Malaysia's domestic football also features plenty of stories like this, that major moment when a player has to consider letting go of his financial and employmeny stability as an amateur, to make the leap into the unknown of professional football.