the malaysian football fever

when it comes to sport we Malaysians always give high hopes for the athletes' success. badminton and squash for example for we have won many events and our athletes is known around the world for it. but when it comes to football, every Malaysian who loves the game get really frustrated watching the old harimau malaya plays. they have no rythm, no skills, and no finishings. but that was then, sinced the new boys stood up and became our trust to make a different, even though with 'stones thrown' at them, they proved wrong to everyone and now people are cheering, how ironic we Malaysians are.

truthfully, everyone has been waiting for these moments or should i say era because maybe now it's our starting point to become more than we are now or become one of the nations who can reach the world cup. even the African nations are getting stronger by the years as we watched them play during the latest world cup in south Africa. surprisingly the down-under Australians which drastically improved so well and even managed to reach the world cup in Africa for the first time in history. this shows the country's spirit to shine amongst the football-elite-nations such as Brazil, Argentina, Italy, Holland, and other part of the continent.

to me, japan was the most improved of all teams. for the likes of Honda the young Japanese star can even take free kicks on par with former player David Beckham, Zinedine Zidane and other free-kick stars such as Ronaldinho, Christiano Ronaldo and Andrea Pirlo. and no one thought it was possible that japan can even raise such fine athlete. maybe malaysia also can raise these types of stars if we really wanted to.

obviuosly young talents are increasing around the world and more nations has shown great effort in the development of their young players. and the same goes for our boys too, as we saw it in the news, even the Vietnamese and the the Indonesian were shocked with disbelief of how harimau melaya played their game. regardless the laser blaming or not our boys just out shines the other stars from east Asia.

even though harimau melaya has shown great changes, but for me they still have a lot of work to do to improve if they are dreaming to reach the world cup. they are many silly mistakes made by our players during the game which should not been made which we don't see very often in other nations football. silly mistakes such as tumbling in front of the keeper would surely cause the team big time and these kind of mistakes should be improved on so that we have a better chance of scoring when the time matters.

but a lot has been improved in the keeper's part, as we see our keeper this time around is no laughing stock. other keeper we had before was totally and utterly rubbish compared to present keeper Khairul Fahmi. this guy had shown great personality and determination in doing his job done and even saved a penalty in the second leg of the final as if showing to every Malaysian keeper before hand 'this is how it's done'.

to me, i just hope, since i've been waiting for this moment for so long, Malaysia would reach a better level of football. we should give everyone in the team big applause because this time around the team have gotten better starting from the keeper, defenders, midfielders and of course the forward.

the fast pace football showed by Kunalan and Amirulhadi Zainal surely has catches our nations eyes which no doubt has contributed in the way harimau malaya had played their game. fast pace football as we see in the English Premiere league (EPL) and other part of Europe leagues can maybe reached our football soon. if there are more players like these guys around i surely think that our football would be very interesting to watch soon enough.

not to forget, our Norshahrul Idlan Talaha with his trademark dribbling which made a hell out of the opponent defenders. his style of dribbling is very similar to the European star or the Brazilian stars which is very exciting to watch, but sometimes he has also lack of consistency and does not deliver well to execute the finishing, and i think this is his part to improved on to become more fearsome player in the near future.

Mohd Safee in other hand has shown great strength in scoring. the left-footer surely can score cracking goals and also proved that he can also score with his head. i believe that if safie would keep up his finishing and do less mistakes, soon enough the world would have an interest of buying him for their clubs. hopefully there are more young stars like him around to boost our game up-front.

it's time for the younger boys to dominate our football culture, and one day hopefully we could see Malaysians faces playing in one of the prestige clubs in Europe, like the Korean-Manchester United player Park Ji-Sun or Ryo Miyaichi, a young Japanese player at 18, who has recently signed up a contract with Arsenal at a very young age.

in the Head Coach Rajagobal's part, it's great to see a coach that really give his trust in the younger boys, just like what the big teams in Europe are doing since long ago. this new trust on youngsters to lead our national teams is refreshing as hopefully we can see more rising stars to make our football more fascinating which surely increase the spectators to buy tickets to watch our boys play at close up.

lastly, i really hope soon enough there will be no politics in our football, and the 'sultans' would kick themselves out of our football association and give the people who really knows their stuff, if malaysia really wants to raise it's image of football to a higher standards and respective level around the world.