by BERNAMA

KUALA LUMPUR – All 31 players who were called up to join the national Under-23 (U-23) squad’s central training camp stand an equal chance to make the cut into the final team for the Hanoi SEA Games next month.

Head coach Brad Maloney (picture) said his charges will be given a fair chance to prove their mettle in the friendly fixtures against the Timor-Leste U-23 team on April 29 and the Philippines U-23 side on May 1 before he finalised the squad for the biennial Games in Vietnam.

“Yes, everybody has a chance and there’s no guaranteed position for anybody in the squad,” he told reporters during the training session at Wisma FAM in Kelana Jaya last night.

Yesterday, 14 out of 31 players have already reported for duty to join the Hanoi SEA Games centralised football training camp.

In this regard, Maloney said it was not ideal not to have a full squad in the centralised training camp and had to make do with his current lineup at the moment.

With more footballers expected to join the camp in phases after they are released by their respective clubs, the Australian-born coach believed that he would have a full squad by this Saturday.

Drawn in Group B, Malaysia will take on Thailand on May 7 followed by Laos (May 11), Singapore (May 14) and Cambodia (May 16) at the Thien Truong Stadium in Nam Dinh. Only the top two teams in the group stage will advance to the semi-finals.

Malaysia, which won the silver medal in the 2017 edition on home ground, failed to get past the group stage in the 2019 edition in the Philippines.

The last time Malaysia won the ‘mother of all medals’ in the biennial Games was in the 2011 edition in Indonesia, with head coach Datuk Ong Kim Swee guiding them to victory.

Besides preparing for Hanoi, the players are also gearing up for the U-23 Asian Cup in Uzbekistan, scheduled to take place from June 1 to 19.