Congratulations to Selangor and Dollah Salleh for proving to the rest of the teams playing in the Malaysian Super League tournament that Perak is no longer invincible playing in Perak Stadium. Selangor created a history of some sort last night, breaking their 12 year old jinx of failing to beat Perak in their home ground. It is interesting to take note that Selangor last won against Perak in Ipoh way back in 1996!
As a Perak soccer fan, I’m not at all disappointed with the final match result. I have expected it since Selangor had better preparations than Perak. Dollah Salleh and his assistants had done their homework well for Selangor and they knew when and where to attack Perak last night. Steve Darby meanwhile failed miserably; he possibly had underestimated Selangor and thought that he could beat Selangor with the same approach that he had used in Perak’s previous match against Selangor in Shah Alam.
What the hell went wrong with Perak last night?
I would argue that nothing went wrong for Perak. Perak soccer players had given their best but Selangor outplayed and outwitted them good. Selangor managed to control the rhythm of the match through possession of the ball in the middle of the field thus giving Perak midfielders little chance to feed Perak’s two centre forwards with good scoring opportunities.
Dollah Salleh knew Khalid Jamlus pretty well; he knew that Jamlus is an opportunistic centre forward that could only score goals if the opportunity to do so is given to him in the penalty box area. It is obvious that Dollah Salleh also knew that Perak’s Chilean import centre forward Caceres also has the same characteristics with Jamlus. Knowing those two important facts are enough to convince Dollah Salleh that the best way to stop Perak is to control the middle of the field. He told his soccer players to do just that and they did not disappoint him.
As far as I’m concerned, last night’s match was a perfect example why Perak need to have good strikers in the team, strikers that can run extremely fast with the ball like what we have seen in past players such as Keita Mandjou and Frank Seator. The absence of such good strikers in the team made Perak look awfully blunt and not at all dangerous upfront. It is quiet pathetic to see both Caceres and Jamlus struggled really hard to outrun, outpace and outsmart Selangor’s young and fast defenders last night. I’m not going condemn either one of them since I know that they are not fit to do that kind of thing, they are out and out centre forwards who need strikers or wingers to do the running for them.
Back to Selangor, last night’s match revealed another good aspect of Dollah Salleh’s amazing variety of soccer tactics. Selangor was successful last night because of their clever use of numbers. Selangor put plenty of players behind when defending and Selangor also push plenty of players upfront when attacking. This is something that Steve Darby had not anticipated and Perak was practically caught with their soccer shorts down. I was really surprised to see that Selangor did not use Elie Aiboy to the fullest last night. Elie Aiboy was a lonesome figure playing a very small role. Everybody expected to see Selangor launching their attacks from the flanks but we saw something else last night. I guess this is another one of those well known Dollah Salleh’s surprising soccer tactics. :-)
I would like to comment on Perak’s poor composure and focus on last night’s game but I’m not going to do that here in this post. I will do that perhaps tomorrow in a new post. I was really disappointed to see Perak broke into pieces after the referee had awarded Selangor with a penalty in the second half. Perak soccer players should not have retaliated and argued with the referee, they should have maintained their focus on the game and continue fighting. I will have more on this tomorrow.
In the meantime, I would like to say well done to Dollah Salleh and Selangor. They truly deserve their win last night. Steve old chap, you need to go back to the drawing board and come up with something better!
Tags: perak fa, malaysian super league, football, soccer, malaysia
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1 comments:
good write up...
although i feel mad with what u wrote but fact is fact....
Perak extremely need a killer striker....
keep writing dude...