KUALA LUMPUR – Are the footballers at the Mokhtar Dahari Academy (AMD) good enough to be part of Malaysia Under-16s?
With the 19th edition of the AFF U16 Boys’ Championship just around the corner, questions have been raised about whether our under-16s, who mostly come from AMD, are ready to participate in the tournament.
Under the guidance of head coach Javier Jorda Ribera and team manager Christopher Raj Aralanthu, Malaysia are drawn in Group C alongside Thailand, East Timor and Australia.
The tournament is scheduled to take place in Surakarta, Indonesia, from June 21 to July 4.
In the previous edition of the tournament, which also took place in Indonesia, Malaysia U16s were knocked out in the group stage.
AMD, established in 2014 with the goal of producing some of the finest talents in local football, has been the main contributor (90%) of players for the national U16s in competitions over the years.
However, statistics have shown that only a few top talents from AMD over the past decade have managed to see success in their careers, such as Arif Aiman Hanapi, who plays for Johor Darul Ta’zim, and Luqman Hakim Shamsudin, who plays for YSCC Yokohama in the Japanese league.
While the majority of the players in the academy tend to remain stagnant in their growth, the overreliance on AMD players has also seen Malaysia suffer heavy defeats in a series of friendlies last year against Uzbekistan and Saudi Arabia and getting knocked out in the group stage of the U17 Asian Cup, which took place in Thailand.
Hence, the question arises: why does the Malaysia U16s team management, under the Football Association of Malaysia (FAM), heavily rely on players from AMD, which has clearly proven to be ineffective over the years?
It appears changes are being made by FAM, with reports indicating that the U16s management is in talks to bring several young heritage players into the team, such as Sean Fetterlein from FC Copenhagen, Kim Johan Tegnander, Aiden Rawlins and Joshua Ang, as well as Kaveen Waran from Perth Glory Youth.
Speaking to Scoop, sports analyst Mohd Sadek Mustafa believes that the players from AMD need to be reevaluated for their form and their relevance to the national U16s.
“The players and the products from AMD need to be reevaluated due to the number of failures they have experienced in competitions over the years.
“I believe that most of them don’t even deserve to represent the national team, as everything comes easily for them. They don’t need to go through a proper selection process to be part of the national team.
“Due to the lack of youth development in our current state of national club football, they can be easily absorbed into the national team just because they are AMD players, with FAM only having one option to choose from.
“Furthermore, over the years, we have not seen a proper transition of these players into Super League clubs. Hence, I believe that the National Sports Council (NSC), through its National Football Development Programme (NFDP), should be serious about hiring some of the best coaches to nurture the best players for the future of the national team,” said the senior sports science lecturer at Universiti Teknologi Mara when contacted.
At the same time, Sadek also said it would not be the AMD players’ fault if they failed to perform at the upcoming U16 Boys’ Championship, citing that the Malaysia U16s team management had failed to give enough tournament exposure to the players.
For the record, the last time the national U16s had any game time was during the U17 Asian Cup in Thailand.
“A team can only get better if they are exposed to tournaments, and I don’t see any efforts being taken by the U16 national team management to send their players to tournaments.
“When Datuk Lim Teong Kim was the head coach from 2013 to 2019, we could at least see efforts being made to send the team to tournaments in Spain and England, and we saw a lot of progress from that.
“Now it seems like the national U16s team management is working in a silo and doesn’t have proper planning for the team. This matter has to be rectified before it becomes too late, as teams in Southeast Asia, such as Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam, are already sending their players abroad for competitions and are elevating their gameplay,” Sadek added.
The NFDP and AMD, which rely on government funding, are currently under the purview of the NSC, while FAM is only part of the steering committee. – June 9, 2024