PETALING JAYA, Jan 13 — The national football team will have to wait a little longer to start training for the second round of the 2022 World Cup/2023 Asian Cup Qualifiers scheduled for March following the cancellation of this month’s centralised training camp.
Football Association of Malaysia (FAM) president Datuk Hamidin Mohd Amin said the cancellation was due to the enforcement of the 14-day movement control order (MCO) in six states effective today.
He said FAM considered several options, including holding the centralised training camp in one of the states not affected by the MCO, for example, Perlis or Sarawak, but faced difficulties from the technical aspect.
“We are concerned and will abide by the government’s decision as health takes priority. The secretariat will prepare several options if the situation continues.
“We also discussed proposals to move the training camp but there are many difficulties involved in trying to move the entire team, conduct training sessions and abide by the stricter standard operating procedures (SOPs). It isn’t easy to enter Sarawak… there are certain SOPs,” he told a media conference after chairing the FAM’s 12th executive committee meeting at Wisma FAM, Kelana Jaya here yesterday.
National head coach Tan Cheng Hoe was supposed to conduct the team’s first training session since November 2019 from January 15-26. Malaysia will take on the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in Dubai on March 25, before meeting Vietnam on March 30 in the second round of qualifiers.
On Monday, Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin said the government decided to enforce the MCO in six states — Penang, Selangor, Federal Territories (Kuala Lumpur, Putrajaya and Labuan), Melaka, Johor and Sabah — for 14 days beginning today until January 26.
He said that six other states — Pahang, Perak, Negeri Sembilan, Kedah, Terengganu and Kelantan — would be placed under the conditional movement control order (CMCO) while the recovery movement control order (RMCO) would be implemented in Perlis and Sarawak for the same period.
Hamidin, who is also the Malaysian Football League (MFL) president, announced that all professional footballing activities nationwide would be suspended for two weeks until January 26.
“We’ll follow whatever procedure is set by the government. After all, we don’t have any matches (for now), only training. But they (the teams) need to comply by not holding any training throughout the country,” he said.
Hamidin, however, stressed that FAM and MFL would need to be more prepared with several options to ensure the 2021 season of the Malaysia League (M-League) will take place.
In a separate development, FAM secretary-general Stuart Ramalingam confirmed that the national Under-19 squad would represent the country at the 2021 SEA Games in Vietnam before being turned into a project squad for the 2023 edition in Cambodia.
— Bernama
