Malaysia ready to take on Singapore

Malaysian coach K. Rajagobal has declared that his team are ready to take on Singapore in the second round, first leg of the World Cup Qualifier at Jalan Besar Stadium on Saturday.
 

Rajagobal is in a confident mood after watching his boys play with more urgency and confidence last weekend, albeit in a 6-3 defeat to English Premier League side Liverpool.

"I saw the spark in my players against Liverpool. They are ready to take on Singapore," said Rajagobal.

"(Now) we should be able to play our normal game. There are injury concerns but those who have recovered are doing great."

The coach is delighted that striker Safee Sali produced a near perfect performance in his first match, after recovering from injury, against Liverpool.

"Safee's return is timely as I need a player like him to play against Singapore. I've tried options in his absence but my experiments did not bring the desired results.

"I believe Safee wants to score as many goals as possible against Singapore. His return to form is bad news for them."

Safee's strike partner, Norshahrul Idlan Talaha, who is struggling to recover from a hamstring injury, is not expected to play.

Among the other strikers in the squad are Baddrol Baktiar, Shahrizal Saad, Ahmad Fakri Saraani and S. Chanturu.

Malaysia are expecting an intimidating reception from the Singapore fans at Jalan Besar Stadium.

However, the national players should be able to handle the situation as they had faced hostile fans confidently during last December's AFF Cup.

Singapore are also in confident mood, going into Saturday's match following their 3-2 win over Taiwan in Monday's friendly match.

Coach Radojko Avramovic said his players played well but still needed some fine tuning.

"It was a good game, but there were some points that we'll have to look to improve on.

"I'm not so happy with the way we weren't able to apply some of our training drills in the match, but we were keeping the ball and creating chances," Avramovic said yesterday.

Singapore will be depending on captain Shahril Ishak to do the damage against Malaysia..The attacking midfielder showed invention in his passing and penetration in attack against Taiwan.

Shahril said: "I want to beat Malaysia. All the boys want to win the tie and I want to be able to help the team do that. We are confident and I think Malaysia may find it difficult to play on the artificial turf at Jalan Besar."