After ten consecutive Super League titles could the Malaysian champions’ superiority be coming to an end?
In Malaysia, the Super League is shifting from a year-round format to a cross-year competition for the 2024-25 season. The biggest change, though, might come at the top of the table. Defending champions Johor Darul Ta’zim completed a decade of dominance by lifting their tenth straight league title at the end of 2023 as part of a domestic treble, but they should now be considered the underdogs – at least, that is, according to the Crown Prince of Johor.
Tunku Ismail ibni Sultan Ibrahim, who was recently appointed as the Regent of Johor, is the man behind all of JDT’s success in the last ten years. Founded in 1972 as PKENJ FC and later rebranded to Johor FC in 1996, the club did not have a single major title in their cabinet as recently as 2012, but then everything changed.
At the time, it was not just Johor FC but Johorean football in general that was in a sorry state of decline. With a population of over four million, Johor is the second-largest of Malaysia’s 13 states, yet getting that huge population interested in football was a struggle due to out-dated infrastructure, poorly performing clubs and allegations of match-fixing. Amid pleas from the few remaining local fans, Tunku Ismail – commonly known as TMJ, an abbreviation of his title – took over as President of the Johor Football Association (PBNJ).
TMJ is credited with weeding out many of the issues in the FA by withdrawing most of the region’s clubs from the national pyramid and devoting the majority of their efforts – and most importantly his investment – to the newly-named JDT. The club went big in their first windows with royal patronage, signing players from major clubs in Spain, Argentina, Portugal, Greece, Brazil and Germany.
Such an injection of cash and quality instantly took JDT from being relegation battlers in 2012 to title challengers in 2013 – finishing third, just three points off top spot – and then Super League champions in 2014. They were also able to recruit a lot of key domestic players from their rivals at the top of the table due to their financial issues, so signs of a dynasty slowly began to emerge.
Year after year, Johor Darul Ta’zim seemed to set new records. In 2015, they became not just the first Malaysian club to lift a continental trophy but also the first Southeast Asian side to win the AFC Cup as they defeated FC Istiklol 1-0 in the final in Tajikistan. A year later, they won a domestic double with an invincible league campaign to boot. In the
