BREAKING THE GREAT WALL
Malaysia must stop China who have plundered 13 goals
MALAYSIA’S Olympic dream will likely turn into ashes if they fail to demolish the Great Wall of China in today’s AFC Under-23 qualifiers at the Shah Alam Stadium.
Qualification to next year’s Tokyo Olympics is one of many targets in the FA of Malaysia’s (FAM) F:30 roadmap.
It will be embarrassing for the national body if Ong Kim Swee’s side do not achieve it as fans are already furious with them for the senior team’s failure of winning the recent Airmarine Cup.
It will be a winner-take-all contest Group J match today. Only the pool champions will advance to next year’s AFC Under-23 Championship in Bangkok, which will offer three Olympic spots.
After two rounds of matches against Laos and the Philippines, both teams are tied with maximum points. China hold the advantage with 13 goals compared to Malaysia’s four.
Both, however, have a rock-solid defence that has yet to concede goals.
Under Guus Hiddink, not only are China finding plenty of joy in attack, they have also been superb in defence, marshalled by Li Yang and Jiang Sheng Long.
A draw might also take Malaysia through on the account of being one of the four best second-placed teams in the entire qualifiers but that depends on at least four teams losing in the final round today.
To prepare for the crunch match, Kim Swee rested several core players in Sunday’s 1-0 win over Laos but needed Safawi Rasid to rescue the team with a late goal.
“We have to come out with a good plan. China are a good team who have scored 13 goals,” said Kim Swee.
“That shows how good they are. We are an average team but sometimes an average team can create upsets.
“I don’t want to look at the format. What we need to do is think how to win. It won’t be easy but it is not impossible.
“We have to go into the game tomorrow (today) to look to qualify automatically.
“If you look at the 13 goals that they have scored, there’s a lot of variety not only with headers.
“They are a complete team, so we cannot concentrate on only one part. We have to be very smart in our approach when we play against them.”
To underline his desire to beat Guus Hiddink’s side, Kim Swee had a closed-door training session yesterday to work on tactics.
Malaysia will have to stop China from scoring today. Seven players have scored for China with Shan Huanhuan being the leading scorer with three goals, followed by Yang Liyu, Lin Lianming and Hu Jinghang (two each).
The Malaysian defence will need to stop the rampaging Chinese and the onus is on Dominic Tan to be the leader at the back, along with Syamer Kutty Abba and Shahrul Nizam Ros Hasni.
“We know what we have to do and that is to do our best to get the three points against China,” said Dominic.
“It’s good that we are the underdogs tomorrow... the pressure is on them. We’ve already proved that we can beat the big teams in Asia and hopefully we can do it again against China.”
Last year, Kim Swee’s side defeated Saudi Arabia to reach the Under-23 Championship quarter-finals and also South Korea in the Indonesia Asian Games.