SEPANG, Dec 6 — The national Under-22 Years (U-22) squad chief coach, Datuk Ong Kim Swee is unhappy at the assumptions raised by certain quarters on the failure of his team at the 2019 SEA Games in the Philippines.
The squad under him, lined by among the nation’s best young players, show-cased a bland performance, only collecting four points from four matches, in fact, was humiliated 1-3 by Cambodia, and simultaneously failed to advance to the semi-finals stage.
The failure saw a myriad of criticisms hurled at the performance of his player line-up and disputing the usage of the 3-4-3 format by his team.
The coach, who enabled Malaysia to take home the gold medal at the 2011 edition in Jakarta, Indonesia, regarded their actions as just publicity seeking.
‘‘There is no problem in terms of our format. Only, a few so called readers and sport reporters who disputed (it) and I believe they were just full of talks and wanted publicity,’’ he told reporters upon his arrival at the KL International Airport here, last night.
The national team under Tan Cheng Hoe had applied the 4-3-3 format, the basic format of the Malaysian football DNA, dubbed ‘Cara Malaysia’ (The Malaysian Way), which was launched in July.
The Harimau Malaya squad exhibited an excellent performance using the format, but the 3-4-3 format used by Kim Swee was also successful in producing quality play and recording victories to be proud of including beating South Korea 2-1 at the 2018 Asian Games.
‘‘It was not disputed when we used the same system when winning in past championships. So, these are all for the sake of raising several issues when the team loses, which is the norm.
‘‘As to me, there is no problem with either the 3-4-3 or 4-3-3 format or any format at all,’’ said Kim Swee.
The 2019 SEA Games festival in the Philippines was his last duty with the national U-22 squad after the Football Association of Malaysia (FAM) yesterday, decided not to extend his contract which would expire at the end of this year.
‘‘I have been exposed to and learned from a great deal of good experiences, both sweet and bitter, in the past 10 years or five editions of the SEA Games,’’ Kim Swee added. — Bernama
