National Sports Council (NSC) director-general Datuk Zolkples Embong described the action of the men's football team to manhandle match officials after their 1-3 loss to Vietnam, as a disgrace to the country.
He added that the reason offered by head coach K. Rajagobal that the incident was triggered by bias and controversial decisions made by the referee against Malaysia, cannot be accepted. And, surely many fans would be upset with that "childish" behavior of the players.
"To me, the referee was fair and indeed a number of decisions made by him favoured the Malaysian team," said Zolkples who was among those who watched the match on Sunday.
The duty of any coach is not only to prepare the team tactically but also to teach his or her players that the referees decision is final.
In the match held at the Main Stadium of the Laos National Sports Complex, Malaysia lost 1-3 to Vietnam, a result that put Malaysian semifinal hopes on tender hooks.
According to Bernama, when South Korean referee Kim Jong Hyeok blew the final whistle, some of the Malaysian players charged at the referee to register their protest after the South Korean had dismissed substitute Mohd Zaquan Adha Abd Radzak for a second bookable offence.
Players had also retorted to throwing water bottles aimlessly at the match official before security officials from Laos intervened and prevented the situation from getting out of hand.
Zolkples also blamed all the Malaysian team officials for further provoking the players, with the exception of Tan Cheng Hoe (coach) who sat calm on the bench.
He added that Malaysia should have just accepted the result because the Vietnam players played better as they were fitter and faster.
"From my observation, our players played below their capabilities and paid too much respect to their opponent," he said.
Uncle Joe, Here we have the NSC DG coming out admitting what transpired in Laos. What the DG Datuk Zul said is very true of a top class team led by top class Team officials.
ReplyDeleteNow fellow Malaysian who has been following the team in this blog.Firstly let me remind you that this is a Category B team. OCM has classified them so. They go there with no hopes and they are at all times the underdogs.
These Team of players and their officials are sadly the strays picked from FAM. What do you expect from strays? To behave like true blood pedigree sportsmen?
Are you really surprised by these Malaysian football underdogs? Their conduct and their behaviour speaks volumes.
So to deal with this problems is actually quite easy. By analogy, get the Bandaraya dog shooters team to go to Laos and tell them to do what they do with rabbied and crazy strays. Take the official dogs who encouraged them in the melee also.
Now the Girls Team are different, just let them fade away quitely, many of them will get married and start a family and I can assure you that they rather forget this Laos SEA Games.