Malaysia’s national futsal coach Chiew Chun Yong has come forward to confess that the national futsal team is not good enough.
He attributed the matter of contention to the absence of a competitive futsal league in Malaysia.
The national futsal squad recently came in third at the AFF ASEAN Futsal championship, after defeating Timor Leste 8-1 in Bangkok.
While the majority of us would be complacent with that result, coach Chiew Chun Yong is far from it. He feels that the national futsal squad has yet to reach their full potential, and that they could have done much, much better.
Chun Yong told Kosmo that if only there was a competitive futsal league, just like football, it would make it much more effective to produce more top-notch players and yield a better performance.
However, Chun Yong also stressed that team can use this experience as a learning block to perform better in future tournaments.
“I think it’s quite clear that the absence of a competitive futsal league is the problem. In fact, it puts us behind a lot of countries, especially Thailand. Thailand is definitely way ahead of us and they have an active competitive league.” he explained.
“If we compare ourselves to Thailand, Indonesia, Myanmar or even Brunei, they have a different kind of preparation altogether. It’s much more complete, especially since they have domestic futsal league to help them prepare prior to a major tournament.”
“Even without long-term training, our national futsal squad performed exceptionally, so I’m sure we can take it to another level. Now we know where we stand, so with a competitive futsal league and focused trainings, I’m sure we’ll be able to churn more young talents for the national squad, and put up a better fight.”
Thailand emerged champions of the AFF Futsal championship 2017, after defeating Myanmar 8-1 in the finals. Malaysia came in third. Prior to this, Malaysia also came in third back in 2001, 2007, 2008 and 2015 in the same tournament.
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