KUALA LUMPUR, Dec 22 — Can the Harimau Malaya change its stripes? Well, unlike the impossibility of changing that proverbial tale, the Football Association of Malaysia (FAM) need to jump out of its skin by taking 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 (national squad named after the Malayan Tiger in Malay) will face 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 last qualified on merit in 1980.
Sports analyst Dr Pekan Ramli said FAM have not seemed to learn from the old lessons when they did not show any radical change in preparing the national team in an orderly manner to face the AFF Cup competition, specifically, when there was a dire lack of training period and player selection issues.
The obvious paradigm shift to guarantee victory on the international stage must be: Country must come first, club comes later so that national duty means allegiance, which translates to a longer spell of training camp where players can blend together to function as one fighting unit.
Pekan, who is also the Head of the Sports Section of the Ministry of Higher Education, said fans actually understand that it is not easy to win the ASEAN Football Federation Cup, with records bearing grim testimony that Malaysia only emerged champion once in 2010 and runner-up three times (1996, 2014, 2018).
However, what was 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, thus 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, as well as set clear criteria in calling up players to the central training camp to face 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 playing with a team that is in a good position in the main competition, maybe he has a lot of experience. 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 is seen to be far behind compared to Vietnam and Indonesia, which adopt a fast match pattern.
“Fitness level is also high, 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.
Malaysia as the 2018 runners-up, started the Group B campaign with a 3-1 win over Cambodia, 4-0 over Laos, but were beaten 0-3 by Vietnam and 1-4 by Indonesia, thus failing to advance to the semi-finals when 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 period following the Malaysia Cup competition ending just six days before the (AFF Cup) first match against Cambodia.
Also starkly 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 what 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 point fingers.
In appealing for common sense, he said limited 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 Nov 24 and unlike other national teams whose domestic competitions were over, Malaysia still had players who were playing for 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 we missed the opportunity to register more players because the registration deadline had passed,” he explained.
— Bernama
