Malaysia national team player, Dion Cools, feels guilty for the resignation of Tan Cheng Hoe from the coaching chair of the Malaya Tigers squad. Tan Cheng Hoe resigned as coach of the Malaysian national team after failing to advance to the 2020 AFF Cup semifinals.
In the competition between Southeast Asian countries, Tan Cheng Hoe’s Malaysian national team had to stop at the group stage. Malaysia’s failure to reach the 2020 AFF Cup semifinals was due to losing a crucial match against the Indonesian national team.
At that time, Malaysia was forced to its knees by the Indonesian national team with a score of 1-4 at the National Stadium Singapore. This failure made Tan Cheng Hoe feel responsible and finally chose to withdraw from the Malaysian national team.
Tan Cheng Hoe admitted that he did not get pressure from anywhere when he took the decision to resign from the chair of coaching the Malaysian national team. The 53-year-old coach officially left his position as coach of the Malaysian national team on Monday (3/1/2022) local time.
Information regarding the resignation of Tan Cheng Hoe from the Malaysian coach was known through an official statement from the Malaysian Football Federation (FAM). “FAM would like to thank Cheng Hoe who has served for 14 years since becoming the coach of the Malaysia U-20 national team in 2005 to 2013 and returning in 2017 as assistant coach of the national team, Nelo Vingada,” the FAM statement said.
Suddenly, Dion Cools also admitted that he was surprised by the departure of Tan Cheng Hoe as a tactician in the Malaysian national team. Dion Cools said that the Malaysian national team players were to blame for the failure in the 2020 AFF Cup which forced Tan Cheng Hoe to resign from his post.
“This is sad news to hear because I think we as players are also to blame, myself included,” Dion Cools told Nadi Arena, quoted from Stadium Astro. “Of course, it’s part of football, but it’s not a good day to say that,” said the FC Midtjylland player.
Dion has just joined the Malaysian national team in the last match against the Indonesian national team. In that match, Dion was featured as a starter and a duet with Junior Eldstal in the center back position. Even so, Dion and Elstadl were unable to ward off the onslaught of the Indonesian national team so they had to be willing to be uprooted four times. Dion also felt sorry for the big defeat suffered by the Malaysian national team from the Indonesian national team.
“If you analyze the game you can see we did well for a while, but after that, we couldn’t keep up,” said Dion. “It was something that was disappointing for me as well because we lost in big numbers. Of course I was disappointed with myself because I arrived there with high hopes of qualifying for the next round and doing miracles, but it didn’t happen. So, I’m very disappointed. Myself and the team will never blame the coach, because in the end, we are the ones playing on the pitch,”he added.
