Aidil Zafuan brings a masterclass in double-breasted suit at Liga M Awards 2025/26

Aidil Zafuan (second from left).

It's worth knowing all of that before looking at the photographs, because Aidil Zafuan at the Liga M Awards 2025/26 doesn't dress like a man trying to prove something. He dresses like a man who has already proven it, several times over, in front of much tougher crowds than a red carpet.

The suit itself is a study in restraint. A structured double-breasted jacket in black, worn with a crisp white shirt, a slim black tie, and a white pocket square folded with just enough irregularity to look intentional rather than pressed by committee. No pattern competing for attention, no accessory doing overtime. It's the sartorial equivalent of a well-timed tackle: precise, economical, and entirely unbothered by applause.

What elevates the fit isn't the tailoring alone, though the tailoring is doing plenty of quiet work. It's the way he wears it. Watch the gait in the arrival shots: shoulders back without straining, chin level, a walk that eats up the red carpet without once looking like it's performing for the cameras stationed along it. This is a man who has walked out of tunnels in front of tens of thousands of people. A step-and-repeat backdrop was never going to rattle him.

There's a philosophy in that carryover, and it isn't subtle once you notice it. On the pitch, the best defenders aren't the ones making spectacular last-ditch challenges every match. They're the ones who read the game early enough that the spectacular tackle never needs to happen. Positioning, timing, and an almost boring reliability, that's the job description of a top centre-back. Aidil Zafuan appears to have brought precisely that instinct into how he dresses. Nothing here is a last-ditch save. Every element, the double-breasted cut, the tie bar, the pocket square, was clearly placed well before kickoff.

Aidil Zafuan (second from left).

Which brings us to the room itself. Everyone at a gala like this wants to look expensive. Very few understand that looking expensive often means looking like you didn't try. Aidil Zafuan's fit is a masterclass in that distinction: structured shoulders, clean lines, restrained details, and no visible effort spent on being noticed. Real presence doesn't ask whether it looks good. It simply walks in and lets the room supply the answer, which on this particular night, it clearly did.

Asked what he thinks separates a genuinely well-dressed man from one who's simply well-accessorised, Aidil Zafuan kept his answer as clean as his lapel line. "Class," he told GC, "is always about keeping it simple." It's a philosophy that would sound almost too tidy coming from anyone else. Coming from a man who spent two decades reading the game one step ahead of everybody else on the pitch, it lands like something closer to doctrine.

Aidil Zafuan (left).

There's also a nice bit of visual symmetry backstage, where Aidil Zafuan is seen alongside a fellow presenter in black tie, the two trading a brief, quiet moment before stepping up to the microphones. Even there, off-camera in the strictest sense, the posture doesn't drop. That's usually the giveaway. Anyone can hold a pose for a flash. Holding the same bearing when nobody's technically watching is the harder trick, and the more convincing one.

Malaysian football has no shortage of memorable transfers this season, but the most seamless one might belong to Aidil Zafuan himself: from the back four to the front row, without losing a single step of the composure that got him there. A magical night celebrating the best of Malaysian football, and a reminder that the same instincts that win Malaysia Cups also happen to make for very good tailoring judgment.

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