National Juniors yet to find working combination

The national juniors are running out time and practice matches to come up with a good combination for their campaign in the Junior World Cup Finals in June.

They finished third in the just concluded four-nation international at the new Taman Daya Stadium in Johor Baru. They were beaten by India and Pakistan, both by 1-3 margins, and struggled to beat Singapore 2-1 in the round-robin matches before securing a 6-0 win in the classification playoff.

Coach K. Rajan admitted that his boys gave below par performances.

“The bright side is that they are now familiar with the Asian style of play. At some point in the matches against India and Pakistan, they were able to control play. But they need to play more matches to get the moves right,” he said.

The next assignment for the Juniors is an European tour where they are expected to play at least nine matches.

They will play in a four-nation tournament hosted by Spain from April 8-12 and their other opponents are England and Belgium.

The juniors will then head for Belgium for four Test matches (April 14-18) followed by a match against the German national juniors (April) and another against a German club (April 21) before returning home on April 23.

“I am happy with the European schedule as we will get to play quality matches. We need matches against the Europeans. We have two European teams in our group (in the Junior World Cup Finals). The tour will help us adapt to their style of play,” said Rajan.

The Finals will be co-hosted by Malaysia and Singapore from June 7-21. Malaysia are in the same group as Spain, England, South Korea and the United States and the matches will be played at the Taman Daya Stadium.

Malaysia may get to play in another four-nation tournament in Singapore in late April. Singapore are considering staging the tournament to test the facilities at their new stadium.