KUALA LUMPUR − Can the Harimau Malaya change its stripes to avoid another Asia Cup disappointment? Well, the task may be impossible from the outset but the Football Association of Malaysia (FAM) needs to jump out of its skin and take radical action so that the tragic ending of the recent 2020 AFF Cup campaign does not recur.
It is especially important as the Harimau Malaya will be facing the final round of the 2023 Asian Cup football qualifiers in less than six months (in June 2022) in a bid to return to action on the Asian stage after the 2007 edition as hosts and with their last qualification on merit in 1980.
Sports analyst Dr Pekan Ramli said FAM seemed to not have learned from lessons of old when they did not foster any radical change in preparing the national team for the AFF Cup competition, specifically, when there was a dire lack of training time and issues with player selection.
The obvious paradigm shift to guarantee victory on the international stage should be country comes first followed by club so that allegiance to national duty would translate to a longer training spell so that players can effectively come together to function cohesively as a single fighting unit.
Pekan, who is also the Higher Education Ministry sports section head, said fans understand that it is not easy to win the Asean Football Federation Cup with records bearing grim testimony of Malaysia emerging only once as champion in 2010 and three times as runners-up in 1996, 2014 and 2018.
However, what proved to be most disappointing and agonising was the performance and pattern of play displayed by head coach Tan Cheng Hoe’s squad, especially in two important matches against defending champions Vietnam and Indonesia, which resulted in the team failing to advance to the AFF Cup semi-finals.
Therefore, he said it was time for selection of players for the national squad to be made through the selection panel and clear criteria in calling up players to the central training camp to be established when facing a major tournament.
“There must be clear criteria, such as minutes of playing and the fitness of the players. For example, when selecting a striker, it must be a genuine striker, who has proven his ability and agility to score goals in the local league.
“If the player is still young but maybe he has a lot of experience playing with a team that is in a good position in the main competition. The selection panel will submit a list of the best players and the coach will make a decision based on that discerning list.
“So, there are no issues and negative perspectives, such as less minutes (action time), only players who are not tired are released to the national squad, no ‘instructions from the sky’ and so on.
“Otherwise, this (perennial) problem will never be resolved,” he told Bernama.
As this expert has propounded − national duty must be supreme and paramount to club duty or the Harimau Malaya will be forever chasing its own tail.
At the same time, Pekan also urged the FAM and the Malaysian Football League (MFL) to move in tandem in determining whether the national team is more important or the league more important to ensure that the Harimau Malaya can make adequate preparations − priorities must be clear.
Pekan also thinks that the coaching staff needs to be overhauled because the pattern and philosophy of the Malaysian game seems to be lagging compared to the fast match pattern of Vietnam and Indonesia.
"Fitness level is also important − they depend on the fitness of young players. We cannot rely on experienced players, for example for a midfielder, who serves as the main engine of the team − although there is skill, fitness is more important,” he added.
As the 2018 runners-up, Malaysia started the Group B campaign with a 3-1 win over Cambodia and 4-0 over Laos but were beaten 0-3 by Vietnam and 1-4 by Indonesia thus failing to advance to the semi-finals and finishing the competition’s group stage in third place.
Despite the FAM setting a final target, the national squad were plagued by criticism ranging from player selection − when some of the league’s best players were not listed − to a lack of preparation time − as the Malaysia Cup competition ended just six days before the (AFF Cup) first match against Cambodia.
Also in question was the strategy − the decision to bring in only 24 players compared to the 30 players allowed by the organisers − thus causing a crisis to arise when four national players tested positive for Covid-19 and several more players suffered injuries.
Meanwhile, former national footballer Datuk Jamal Nasir, who is a legend in his own right from the golden era of Malaysian football, asked all parties to “hold their horses” − to be patient and wait for the post-mortem report to identify the fundamental weaknesses − or there will be no correction.
“I am also a former national player − if we are angry and disappointed − can you imagine how the players and coaches feel? They also have the same feelings. Who wants abject defeat?
“FAM also, in a recent statement, admitted to its failure and will issue a post-mortem report in the near future. Let’s not insult the coaches or the management, (instead) we look for the cause of failure and fix from there instead of pointing fingers,” he exhorted for cooler heads to prevail and not to blame anyone in particular.
In appealing to common sense, he said time constraints were the reason for bringing in only 24 players with players selected with less minutes of play while the Malaysia League schedule had also been amended and rearranged many times to suit the Harimau Malaya and MFL squads.
“It is common knowledge that the date to register 30 players was on November 24 and unlike other national teams whose domestic competitions were over, Malaysia still had players playing in the semi-finals and final of the Malaysia Cup.
“The coach certainly can’t register players at that time because he is worried that some will be pressed with injury issues so from there I can see how we missed the opportunity to register more players because the registration deadline had passed,” he explained. – Bernama, December 23, 2021
