There is a subplot to Chelsea’s pre-season visit to Malaysia that will not have been lost on anyone old enough to remember the night of 3 May 2005. Johor Darul Ta’zim’s chief executive officer is Luis Garcia — the former Liverpool midfielder whose first-half effort at Anfield in the Champions League semi-final, ruled to have crossed the line before John Arne Riise cleared it, ended Chelsea’s hopes of reaching Istanbul and has been known to English football as “the ghost goal” for the two decades since. Garcia is now running the club Chelsea visit on Sunday evening. The Spaniard, whatever one thinks of the goal, has done rather well for himself.
But the more you look at Johor Darul Ta’zim — the Southern Tigers, Malaysian football’s dominant force — the more the Luis Garcia detail feels like a footnote in a story considerably larger than one disputed goal.
Built from nothing, in thirteen years
The club was founded in 1972 as PKENJ FC, spent four decades in the background of Malaysian football, and was renamed Johor Darul Ta’zim in 2013. That renaming marked the beginning of everything. In 2014, in their first full season under the new identity, they won the Malaysia Super League for the first time. They have claimed it 12 times in total since, including a remarkable run that produced a 20-match winning streak and victories by margins of 10-0 and 14-1 during the 2025-26 season. No club in Malaysian football history had previously won the championship more than twice in succession before JDT arrived. They have now done it more than a decade running.
The 2022 season represented the peak of their domestic ambitions: a treble of Super League, FA Cup and Malaysia Cup, with Brazilian striker Bergson da Silva scoring 46 goals in all competitions. Bergson remains at the club — he was the top scorer in the 2025-26 Super League with 27 league goals — and has now scored over 100 goals in JDT colours, a figure that would earn serious recognition in any league on any continent.
Their continental achievement came in 2015, when they won the AFC Cup — becoming the first Malaysian club ever to win a continental trophy, and the first Malaysian side since 1967 to reach a major continental final. In May 2026, they added the Malaysia Cup for the sixth time in their history, with Arif Aiman winning the man of the match award in front of 50,032 supporters at the Bukit Jalil National Stadium in Kuala Lumpur.
The Crown Prince and the project
At the centre of everything is Tunku Ismail Idris, the Crown Prince of Johor, known throughout Malaysian football as TMJ. His ownership model is genuinely unusual — not ceremonial, not distant, but hands-on in the manner of a sporting director who happens to also be royalty. He has shaped strategy, driven infrastructure investment and set the long-term direction of a club that, when he took it seriously, was not much more than a state institution with modest ambitions.
The Sultan Ibrahim Stadium, JDT’s home and Sunday’s venue, is the most visible expression of that investment. The 40,000-capacity ground opened in 2020 in Iskandar Puteri — a satellite city in the south of Johor state, close to the border with Singapore — and is widely regarded as one of the finest football stadiums in Southeast Asia. It is named after Tunku Ismail’s father, the Sultan of Johor, Sultan Ibrahim, who became Malaysia’s 17th Yang di-Pertuan Agong (King) in January 2024. Tickets for Sunday’s match sold out weeks ago.
The academy JDT operate is another expression of TMJ’s ambition that goes beyond trophies. It is Malaysia’s only fully professional academy system, offering a development pathway from Under-12 to Under-23 level. Strategic partnerships with Borussia Dortmund and Valencia have raised technical standards, while a collaboration with Universiti Teknologi Malaysia ensures players receive educational opportunities alongside their football development. The infrastructure, by the standards of Southeast Asian club football, is genuinely exceptional.
What Chelsea face on Sunday
JDT played their most recent pre-season friendly on July 24, drawing 0-0 with Elche. Their Malaysia Super League season opens on August 21 against Kuching City. They are being prepared, sharpened and motivated — and they will be playing in front of a capacity crowd with something to prove against one of the Premier League’s most famous clubs.
Their current head coach is Xisco Muñoz, the former Watford and Getafe manager who has brought European tactical structure to the Malaysian league. They favour possession-based football and press with intensity — a style that suits the footballing culture TMJ has cultivated and that Bergson’s finishing turns into results with remarkable regularity.
Chelsea, who finished tenth in the Premier League last season, are rebuilding under Xabi Alonso. Their squad for the tour includes Cole Palmer, João Pedro, Estêvão Willian, Liam Delap and Jamie Gittens. It is a match that matters to both clubs in different ways — one looking to find a pre-season rhythm, the other looking to show Asian football’s growing ambition against European opposition.
Luis Garcia will be watching from the boardroom. Chelsea might prefer he stayed in the stands.
Also see – Chelsea ease past Milan in confidence-boosting Jakarta win
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