Hockey coach Stephen ropes in five youngsters to add depth

KUALA LUMPUR: Five youngsters have been called up to join the expanded men’s national hockey team.

Norsyafiq Sumantri, Mohd Najib Abu Hassan, Mohd Amirol Aideed and Mohd Ashran Hamzani – who steered Malaysia to the indoor hockey gold at last month’s Kuala Lumpur SEA Games – and national junior goalkeeper Mohd Zaimi Mat Derus are the new inclusions.

With the five, coach Stephen van Huizen now has 28 players in training for the Asian Cup in Dhaka, Bangladesh, from Oct 11-22.

“We have more options now with the new inclusions. These youngsters will benefit from playing and training with the seniors. The bigger pool of players will also allow us to rotate the players for various invitational tournaments,” said Stephen.

The Asia Cup is not a priority for Malaysia as they have already qualified for next year’s World Cup Finals in India.

But Malaysia are keen to collect valuable world ranking points to have a better seeding at the World Cup.

The matches will be competitive as South Korea, China and Japan are eyeing a World Cup berth.

“We will use the tournament to build our playing structure and test the young players. We cannot use the same 18 players in all the tournaments. Next year will be hectic for us with several major tournaments,” said Stephen.

Besides the World Cup, Malaysia will also compete in the Sultan Azlan Shah Cup, Commonwealth Games and Asian Games. The priority for Malaysia is the Asiad in Indonesia in August.

“The Asian Games will be a qualifier for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. We are targeting the gold to earn automatic berth,” said Stephen, who added that he would name his final 18-man squad for the Asia Cup on Friday.

“We will leave for Dhaka on Oct 6 and play a friendly against Japan prior to the tournament.”

Malaysia are in Group B with South Korea, China and Oman. Group A has India, Pakistan, Japan, Bangladesh.