Next Stop

The next assignment for the Malaysian national football team would have been the upcoming Merdeka Invitational Tournament (Pestabola Merdeka) from 20 - 29 August 2007. If the national players who played in the Asian Cup wanted to redeem their battered pride anytime this year, they would have to wait because FAM has announced that they will be sending the Under-23 team instead to the tournament.

Whether this is a knee-jerk reaction or not, only FAM would know. It is however a good excuse to send the U-23 team instead of the Seniors since it would mean the U-23 would get more matches and extra preparation for the upcoming SEA Games at Korat as FAM will be sending the same team under coach B. Sathianathan.


Pre-Olympic
Malaysia is aiming nothing less than a gold medal at Korat. It is likely that the U-23 team going to Thailand and the Merdeka Invitational will consist of almost entirely the same players that played in the pre-Olympic football campaign earlier this year. (Was that the U-20 or U-21 squad? It's confusing for us as well but we know Sathianathan coaches both U-23 and U-21 teams). If we were to judge the squad from the pre-Olympic qualifiers itself, we atBorakBola are not too confident about the team but would support the team nevertheless.

Travelling Boys
We are nicknaming the U-23 as the Travelling Boys because their warm-up matches prior to the qualifiers included a three-match tour of South Africa, friendly matches in India and playing in the Hanoi Cup in Vietnam. They also had friendlies against local club sides and S-League club side Geylang United.

The Travelling Boys only manage to draw once against Syria and won one game against Hong Kong during the qualifiers. They lost the remaining matches. On Sathianathan defence, he only had a limited time to work with the boys as he was caught in a situation of club/state vs country for the players.

Before the Merdeka Invitational, the team would leave for Slovakia for a two-week stint from Aug 1-15 where they will play some test matches against club sides there. These will include the Slovakian Under-22 side and First Division teams.

Why Slovakia? Is it because it is cheaper? Is it because they have better facilities? Do they have better teams? And the next three assignments are competitions in hot and humid climate. Does FAM blindly approve all these overseas 'training stints'?

Anyway, in September, the Travelling Boys will then go to Myanmar to participate in the Challenge Cup.

The Coach
Sathianathan had been an assistant to previous national team coaches Hatem Souissi and Allan Harris. He was also the person that FAM sent to Germany to watch or observe (whatever you want to call it) the 2006 World Cup and apparently, has presented a paper on the "Malaysia World Cup Dream. BorakBola would very much like to read that paper.

Coach Sathianathan has called up 33 players for centralised training at Wisma FAM. They include Syed Adney, Norfarhan Mohd, Poster Boy and Safee Sali, among others.