Haiya, our national team is just plain hopeless... I was actually hoping for a MEGA goal fest and to be frank, i went for an 8-1 trashing for Malaysia... Anyway, a 2-0 loss is still a small improvement for the team with the worst defense in the Cup...

Still, Norizan shouldn't be the only one who gets the sack for this debacle... Everyone else at the FAM, from the bench-warming s**tty Sultan to all the players should be kicked out and the new guys who take over will then have a fresh, blank slate to start anew!

yeah man.. just like Brazil... hired Dunga... completely revamp the whole team... now won Copa. damn! hehehe

Oh ya, someone like Dunga can also work wonders to the lazybum Malaysian players... In short, we need those tough, super-strict coaches who can work without undue influence from the powers-that-be and turn those losers into potential match-beaters!

My shortlist ya : Sir Alex, Dunga, Guus Hiddink, Bruno Metsu, Fabio Capello (sorry, wrong choice, i think he will screw the team even further... Look at Real Madrid!)...

P.S. Something unrelated to Malaysia team here... What happened to China in recent times? From the high of World Cup qualification in 2002 to getting KO'ed by Uzbekistan out of the Asian Cup? Looks like the coach Mr. Guanghu can expect to see the axe falling on his head soon... And i guess their ranking will fall further from their current #76...

This post has been edited by THT United Gadgets: Jul 19 2007, 10:04 AM

u know who'd be a good coach? Eric Cantona. muakakakakaka.... teach those buggers how to fly in tackle... and fly into stands...

And even kick holes in goalkeepers' chests!

But seriously, with Norizan gone, someone like say, Azman Adnan or even Shebby Singh should be able to fill the void... Both have played for the country before, and with some success, so they should be able to understand the workings of the national team as well as how to change the attitude (maybe even improve their defending and shooting!) of the current crop of players...

nah.. i don't think azman can coach. he was coaching my fren's team, the guy sometimes blur on what to do leh. hehehe.. i think shebby is a good manager but a coach? i don't think he's that good.

Dollah salleh is a good coach.. proven already... so does Zainal.... but i'd love to see Matlan Marjan given the honor. he's very good.... i've seen him coach before.

aiyah bottom line is our own homebred coaches will never be good enough. see the way shebby talks about how "if i were coach, i would .. blablabla"


they THINK they know everything, that's the worst part
haha i like what zc_squash said - break karimi's leg, bapak, emak , semua bangga giler

FAM has to shoulder a large portion of the blame. Players on the other hand should be selected at a young age, based on their attributes and not just ability. I think the following points are important:

a) Education/Intelligence : The 2 are similar because it would mean that the player has a higher learning curve, which in turn means he can think faster on the pitch. While under pressure, our players often resort to route 1 football, pumping hail mary's up to park hoping that our diminutive forwards can miraculously grow 5 inches. A smarter and quicker thinking footballer would have thought of ways to keep possession even when under pressure. How can you expect some kampung fella whose family has been selling lemang the whole of their lives, to have a high learning curve?

b) Mental Toughness : Players who are mentally weak give in too easily. When they go down, they stay down. People say that leaders are born, not made and there is a great deal of truth to this statement. You need players who are competitive by nature and have the will to win. This is innate. Cannot tahan the weather lah, cannot adapt to the food lah; these are all excuses! Nothing worth doing comes easy and you cannot achieve anything without some sacrifice. Our current crop of players lack ambition and desire.

c) Physique : Size isn't everything but it does help. We can identify tall kids and them groom them into footballers. Notice how in their interviews, certain footballers started out with basketball, badminton or some other sport. They were then spotted and groomed into footballers. Currently our team would not be allowed on half the rides in Disneyland. The Koreans, Chinese and Japanese have realised the advantage size gives you and if you have noticed, they are a bigger side these days compared to the past. Against Indonesia, the Koreans fielded a team where their shortest player was 1.82metres. If your team doesn't have speed, go get a sprinter and groom him to be a footballer.

Wattodo, government still provides millions on RM to FAM
but still no improvement...the latest MYTEAM 2 ,until MYTEAM 36 pun malaysian football still underpar,underperform,outclass. *sighhhh
hopefully year 2020 malaysian football will be upclass.
FAM should overhaul now or never!

This one no problem to fullfill, many As and many subjects, I do believe younger generation are able to do this categories quite well. If i remember correctly my spm is like 8 subjects nowadays double. Nowadays a lot of formula milk with high concentrated of DHA+ make the brain better. People are getting smart at young age.

This one hard to find

Well malaysian are not all short, if look at the younger generation are quite tall/big, all drink too much formula milk. I believe this categories isn't a problem.

This post has been edited by Spiv: Jul 19 2007, 12:36 PM

Hey, did u see today's NST? Even the Cabinet is very pissed off about this, looks like the fagg0t Sultan himself has lots of answering to do, now that his son has resigned...

But seriously, the idea of picking tall chaps and then grooming them into footballers is a good start... We need such fellows whose height is greater than the national average in order to develop goalies like Edwin VDS as well as the likes of Peter Crouch (striker) and Jaap Stam (defender)... These tall guys can easily out-head any Asian player around, thats for sure!

azman still hasn't had enough experience. as for shebby; it's always easier said than done, so whether he'll make it big, remain to be seen. dollah and zainal? well, they need to work in pair just like the good ol' days
matlan marjan, aren't he the one who scored 2 goals against england B back in 90s? heck, he was so good back then... but i doubt he'll ever be the national coach. he was an east malaysian and remember the big scandal?
we need a foreign coach with no internal interferences.
allan harris should be good. but i'd like to see roy keane with his no nonsense coaching style

malaysian footballer lack of technique...
they cant keep the ball,passing ...

so my suggestion...

introduce freestyle football...

Well guys, i feel that my going down fighting 3-0 comments in another thread has been vindicated.

Overall, i feel we did quite well last night, albeit we played with 11 men behind the ball for long periods of time. We went down fighting and things would have been even better had we not conceeded the soft penalty. One of our strikers (sorry, don't watch enough local matches to know his name ), the shorter stocky chap actually had a very good game and so did our oft ridiculed keeper .

I've seen a number of comments saying that we played too defensive a game. Well, this proves how much some of the 'lalang' here know about football. I recall one of the comentators saying that "You must learn not to lose before you can learn how to win." In football this is very true, even teams like Manchester United and Liverpool line up defensively when playing superior opposition, and Iran is indeed much, much superior when compared to us. Remember Greece and their Euro victory... the were ultra defensive too.

However, we made an experienced Iran side look VERY ORDINARY. Maybe it was the rain...

The question now is why did the players not show the same spirit and determination in the two earlier games? From what I saw yesterday, we do have the skill, but not the heart. Looks like the boys only started playing when everyone was crying for their necks!

Secondly, why is our coach tactically inept? Wanting to win is admirable, but going gung ho against crazy odds is plain stupid. Had we played defensively we might have gotten lucky and come out with a draw even. Surely we won't lose by five freaking goals? Maybe he's watched 300 one too many times, but he's been given the sack anyways, so lets not dwell on this.

Bad attitute from players, inexperienced coach... hmm... IMHO the FAM should stop blaming the players, the past two weeks are more an indication of management's weakness instead of a lack of quality players. Sp FAM, stop blaming them and start looking into the mirror.

As for the president's comments, again with all due respect Sultan, yes, you have been very good to/for FAM. FAM is a rich organisation now. However, have you been good to/for Malaysian football? Unfortunately, i think the answer is NO.

As for the rest of the doomsayers and bandwagon jumpers, if you have nothing constructive to say, then please keep your peace. Saying stuff like 40-0 and playing Nicol Davids in goal helps not one bit (well, it does prove that you are indeed shallow if not an outright arse ).

This post has been edited by madmoz: Jul 19 2007, 01:32 PM

well said, duke red. that's what i've always wanted to say but never got down to it



Football is not just about skills. A skills-only game is for schoolboys and amateur players who try to dribble all the way from one goalpost to the other.

Our players DO NOT HAVE THE intelligence, the mental strength, the composure, nor the ability to think out of the curve. Our footballers are dropouts etc. that's horrible

i think it's so shallow that we always pick footballers based on their technical attributes (pace, ball control, dribbling, headers etc) .

They should all go for some test or something to see their level of intelligence and decision making.

Much of the criticism stems from the fact that while we are crap, our SEA rivals are not. They have raised their games and even in the face of superior opposition, they attacked and scored. I'll use the Korea vs. Indonesia game as an example again, the Indonesians needed only a draw and they really fought tooth and nail. They challenged the Koreans for everything. I remember seeing Firman's face after the game as the referee blew for full time. The look of disappointment on his face as the ref shook his hand, said it all. Here was a guy that genuinely felt he let his nation down. That being said, I commend their efforts, they exit the tournament with their heads held up high.

The Thai's went out fighting as well after playing some exquisite football at times, and Vietnam is in the quarters. Can you blame Malaysians for being frustrated? We beat Indonesia just a couple of years ago at their home, but can we say that we could have played the Koreans the way Indonesia did? I think not. While it may be smart to play defensively sometimes, we simply don't have enough quality going forward, unlike our SEA rivals.

If our world ranking suggests anything, it's that we will have to line up defensively against any team in the current tournament! If we already expected to lose, at least do so with some dignity. Is playing defensively and losing 3-1, 3-0 and 2-0 really that different from playing attacking football and losing 5-1, 5-0 and 2-0? Either way we lose but when faced against superior opposition, the pressure is on them, let us take the fight to them. This is my take on it.



Perhaps there wasn't any pressure on them this time round, having already exited the tournament, and not having any fans at the stadium to heckle them.

yeah, against team that are stronger than you, play defensively is a good choice but try to counter-attack too.

Cue Duke with a well thought out and intelligent reply. Btw, noticed how this thread has gone a lot colder since the 2-0 loss last night...

Us being crap and our football being down and out are unfortunately foregone conclusions. We should have accepted the fact that we were the weakest team in the Asia Cup and adopted defensive techniques from the get-go. I think last night was not a humiliating defeat for Malaysia, we did pretty well IMHO (considering the fact that we are actually crap in the first place). 2-0 will never look as bad in the history books as 5-0. To quote our ex-coach, this is about damage limitation as the problem is we cannot withdraw our national team from FIFA sanctioned games.

Much has been said about improving the quality of our grassroot and there has also been ample response on this thread alone. Many of these suggestions are indeed workable most if not all will take time. Also, the entire football culture in Malaysia has to change to accomodate some of the more radical ideas. This will not be easy.

In the meantime, what do we do? Distance ourselves from tournaments and become football 'backward', remember how long it took for the English clubs to establish themselves in Europe after their exile? Or send the same group of players to the 'korban' and slide further down the rankings - i.e. more humiliation?

I hate defensive play as much as the next bloke but unfortunately I think that this is the way forward for Malaysia. If we can stop getting knocked about, we can then slowly regain some confidence and hopefully start competing on the Asean level again.

And to be honest, I'd rather the Sultan keep his place, judging by the 'quality' of his to be successors... FAM is but a political pawn for those idiots, at least the Sultan's intentions are noble (no pun intended) enough.

This post has been edited by madmoz: Jul 19 2007, 02:46 PM

Employ foreign coach also no point, coz the selection player still coach have no power. If the coach select 20 very superd talented good player and non bumi, u think they will approve arr.... sorry no offend.

I don't think it's a case of if u r weaker than u should play defensive football. The objective of the game is to score more goals than the opposition after all. We did line up defensively against Iran but we had no game plan to win the game so to speak. We were just there to park the bus and salvage a draw at most. I personally have nothing against defensive tactics if u know how to win a game using it via counterattacking. But u have to choose which game style u want and get the tactics right. Not a half assed version of 4-4-2.

And from what i saw of our SEA neighbours to be fair..our players aren't that much inferior in terms of technique. Our manager is a tactical idiot and although some would find it hard to believe i actually think that with a better manager we could have had a better showing.