Football

“I might just leave Kelantan” – Popov slams Malaysian football ‘schedule’

Kelantan head coach, Velizar Popov was clearly not a happy man when he faced the media in a press conference last weekend.

He was complaining about the fact that the Malaysia Cup and Super League are running simultaneously as such a tight schedule is senseless and detrimental not just to The Red Warriors, but to the other clubs as well.

“The person who was in charge of the current schedule have not considered the welfare of the players and the quality of football. I’m ready to comment about this now because I’m not local and I don’t care about the repercussions.

“This is the truth, I’m not afraid of being fined and I’m ready to leave the club from tomorrow onwards as I’m not satisfied with how they handle things here,” he told the press.

Photo credit: ESPN FC
Photo credit: ESPN FC

The Bulgarian coach made the bold statement to express his dissatisfaction in seeing teams going through a tight schedule of 14 games in 40 days.

“The timetable is abnormal and I have spoken to quite a number of people. It is impossible for the players to maintain a high quality of football since they are not machines or robots that can play all the time,” said Popov.

He has also asked the media to browse through the internet to verify his claims and see is there any team in the world that is playing a high amount of matches in a short period of time.

“Your job as a journalist is to seek out the truth. So please do look around and see is there any European club that is playing 14 matches in 40 days, once every 3 days for 7 weeks consecutively. I assure you that only Malaysia has such a schedule, which should be included in the Guinness Book of World Records,” he said sarcastically.

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