POLAND, to be precise in the city of Poznan, has one of the two worst episodes in my playing career. This was when Malaysia dramatically failed to qualify for the 1994 World Cup in Sydney.
We blew it big time in the crucial fifth to eighth classification matches against Belgium in the Intercontinental Cup, which also acted as the World Cup qualifiers, in Poznan in 1993.
For the record, the top six teams qualify for Sydney.
A win against the Belgians on August 27 would at least see Malaysia booking a spot the sixth-placed team.
My teammates and I were left devastated after the match as we blew a 3-1 at halftime and ended up losing 4-3 on penalty strokes -- after it ended 3-3 in extra-time.
During the halftime, we thought that we already had one leg in the World Cup. We had the lead and had been dominating the match. We were so confident about beating the Belgians.
However, our aim of a place in the World Cup shattered in the end as Belgium managed to force extra-time and win the penalty strokes contest.
Coach Terry Walsh did his homework well by identifying the Belgian flickers and where they would normally place their attempts. Unfortunately, we still lost by the slimmest of margin.
We made silly mistakes to concede the goals in the second half.
The whole team had to take the blame and responsibility although a few started to point fingers at each other after the nightmare.
For me, the whole team should be blamed. We could not blame just the goalkeeper or defenders. The mistakes were made somewhere before that...we worked as a team.
Another sad part was that we did have opportunities to kill off the game in the second half but we wasted it all. We even missed a penalty stroke in the process!
The Malaysian squad then were: Ahmad Fadzil Zainal Abidin, Paul Lopez, Maninderjit Singh, Lailin Abu Hassan, Gary Fidelis, R. Shankar, Charles David, Soon Mustafa Karim, Lim Chiow Chuan, Sarjit Singh, Bryan Jayhan Siva, Calvin Fernandez, Ariffin Ghani, Mohamad Abdul Hadi, Nor Saiful Zaini Nasiruddin and myself.
Not in the picture Sarjit Singh And Mohamad Abdul Hadi, Pic courtesy of Mirnawan Nawawi
The dressing room was like a funeral parlour after the match as everyone was saying nothing, nothing at all.
This was understandable citing what we went through. We were all emotionally down.
It did not end there at the stadium as my hotel roommate Shankar and I had tears in our eyes until the following day! It was a bitter experience for us.
It was always our target to play at the World Cup after the success of qualifying for the 1992 Barcelona Olympics.
We could not be satisfied with just the Olympics. We needed to be involved in another big tournament and in this case, it was the World Cup.
Most of the players in Poznan had never played in a World Cup before and thus that extra motivation. All of us had been working hard to achieve our target.
Malaysia performed reasonably well in the group stages. Group A matches saw us beating Canada 4-2, Cuba 3-2 and Ireland 5-2 but lost 4-2 to South Korea and 1-0 to Spain.
This despite the unfortunate incident when forward Ariffin fractured his finger in the very first match against Canada on August 18 and was ruled out throughout the whole tournament.
Group B comprised of India, Argentina, South Africa, Belgium, Poland and France.
It was a pretty good lesson for me and my teammates in Poznan. We had to keep on playing until the final whistle especially on a big stage even if we were taking a comfortable lead.
I promised myself that I do not want to go through this bitter and sad kind of situation.
Malaysia ended up eighth in Poznan after losing to Canada 8-7 on penalty strokes. The teams were tied at 1-1 in extra-time.
Oh yes...the other bitter episode for me in my playing career was during the 2000 Sydney Olympics.
This was when we blew the chance of beating a formidable Pakistan side in a group match by conceding the equaliser in a 2-2 draw with 20 seconds left on the clock!
A win here would have placed Malaysia, under coach Stephen van Huizen, to be among the top five to eight bracket. That would have been an achievement.
It was wasteful as we let ourselves down right at the end although we had a great chance to beat a team like Pakistan on a big stage.
Poznan will always be a painful episode for me and my teammates, though.
