The big boss of the Malaysian Football Federation borrowed from Vietnam to point out the home team’s mistakes

FAM technical director Scott O’Donell said that the important reason why U23 Malaysia lost all 3 group stage matches was poor physical strength. Besides, the fact that young players do not have many opportunities to compete at the club is also the reason.

“The main problem in U23 Malaysia is that the players lack playing time,” said Mr. Scott O’Donell. “If we look at the statistics, not many players in this squad get to play a lot at their parent club.

Sikh Izhan Nazrel with 2,250 minutes with Negeri Sembilan, Mukhairi Ajmal with 1,684 minutes in Selangor, Saravanan with 1,252 minutes with Kuala Lumpur City and Safwan Mazlan with 1,063 minutes at Terengganu. Those are 4 rare players who compete in the national championship. The remaining players played less than that in Super League 2023.”

Through this, Mr. O’Donell also said that the unreasonable arrangement of the match schedule was the cause. He used U23 Vietnam as an example, when Vietnam’s top tournament was taking place. That allows Thai Son, Van Khang… to have many opportunities to warm up at the club before participating in the team-level tournament.

“The three teams in Group D are Uzbekistan, Vietnam and Kuwait, all of their domestic tournaments are going on in full swing. If we compare, we can see that their players are in the best physical shape. Meanwhile, we only focused on March 17,” Mr. O’Donell said.

“Most clubs have not started training before the 2024/25 season. Besides, it must be admitted that most players arrive at the training camp in poor physical condition.”

Finally, this official pointed out that Malaysia must increase the organization of youth tournaments, creating more opportunities for players to practice.

“According to the European Club Association (ECA), the average number of matches that each youth team in Europe must play is from 35 to 50 matches/year. In Malaysia, the maximum number is only 20 if this team reaches the final. In case the team is eliminated early, the players will only play a maximum of 12 matches a year.

We need to give the players more international competition experience, meeting other U23 teams, not just preparing for U23 Asia or SEA Games. If we cannot organize international friendly matches, we must at least organize an annual training camp so that players have the opportunity to learn from each other.”

Dang Lai