PETALING JAYA (11 April 2013) – The Malaysian national women’s football team will be looking to sign up at least one credible goalkeeper in preparation for the AFF Women’s Championship later this year.
Malaysian women’s chief coach Jacob Joseph said that even though the team made some positive strides at the Vietnam meet last year, it was obvious that goalkeeping was a major problem after scoring just two goals as against conceding seven goals in the group stage.
They narrowly missed the chance for a place in the semi-finals after losing 3-2 to Laos. The other team in the group was Thailand.
“We conceded a handful of goals which we should not have especially in the game against Laos. We should have won that one,” said Jacob (extreme right). “We have already started training in January this year and where last month we were in Perak playing several friendlies.
“These are all just test matches against men’s team but the one thing that they showed is that we needed to improve our goalkeeping and also our strike force.”
Towards that, Jacob said that the team will be looking to select around 12 players at two tournaments in Sarawak next month and then in Sabah possibly in June.
Jacob said that there are currently 23 players in the team following the departure of Mastura Majid and Diah Abdullah.
“We are preparing this team not only for the AFF Women’s Championship but also for the SEA Games in Myanmar later in the year, so it will be good if we can get some backups,” he added.
