BANDAR SERI BEGAWAN (13 July 2012) – After a four-year hiatus, Brunei are looking forward to making a positive return to ASEAN’s biggest football extravaganza – the AFF Suzuki Cup.
Dato Paduka Abdul Rahman Mohiddin, the president of the National FA of Brunei Darussalam (NFABD), said that even though the team will have to play in the qualifying in October, it is great just to be part of the fraternity once again.
“The Suzuki Cup is the biggest, largest and most competitive tournament in ASEAN and it’s also the most watched,” said Abdul Rahman.
“The Euro is for Europe, the AFF Suzuki Cup is for ASEAN.
“It doesn’t matter to us that we play Myanmar first (in the qualifiers in October) because this is a round-robin competition and we will be facing all the teams eventually.”
Brunei last played in the qualifying round of the AFF Suzuki Cup in 2008 where they finished fourth. Only the top two teams from the qualifiers make the cut to the main draw.
But after being banned by FIFA in the middle of 2009, Brunei could not take part in the AFF Suzuki Cup qualifiers a year later in Laos.
For this year’s qualifiers in Yangon in October, Brunei will take on hosts Myanmar in the opener on 5 October before playing Cambodia four days later. They will then battle against Laos on 11 Oct before wrapping up their campaign against Timor Leste on 13 Oct.
