Listen up: Malaysia coach Kim Pan-gon instructing the players at a training session at the Qatar University field in Doha yesterday. — FAM
PETALING JAYA: The Malaysian football team are already assured of a handsome payout just to be among the 24 participating nations in the Asian Cup Finals kicking off in Doha, Qatar, tomorrow.
All 24 teams present in the tournament in Qatar will receive US$200,000 (RM930,000).
Kim Pan-gon’s squad, who reached the Asian Cup Finals on merit after 43 years, can reap a bigger reward if they manage to go further in the tournament.
The team that win the Asian Cup will receive RM23mil while the runners-up will receive almost RM14mil.
The respective semi-finalists are set for a payout of RM4.6mil from the tournament total prize of RM68.7mil.
But financial rewards are not the only motivation for Pan-gon as the challenge for the South Korean coach is to avoid getting overawed by higher ranked opponents who are all in the world’s top 100.
World No. 130 Malaysia will play No. 87 Jordan on Jan 15, No. 86 Bahrain on Jan 20 and No. 23 South Korea, captained by Tottenham Hotspur star Son Heung-min, on Jan 25 in Group E.
Malaysia received a morale boost in their last-minute preparations when they held world No. 91 Syria to a 2-2 draw in a friendly in Doha on Monday.
Pan-gon needs to come up with good tactical strategies to counter his Group E counterparts - Hussein Ammouta (Jordan), Juan Antonio Pizzi (Bahrain) and Juergen Klinsmann (South Korea).
Klinsmann has the strongest credentials among the four coaches. He was a most feared striker for Germany in the 1990s, winning the World Cup as a player in 1990 as well as helping the United States to win the 2013 CONCACAF Gold Cup as a manager.
The 59-year-old will carry South Korea’s high hopes of bringing home the Asian Cup to the country for the third time after 1956 and 1960.
“We believe in this Korean team that they can make it happen because we have so much quality with so many good players doing really well,” said Klinsmann in a recent interview.
“We are capable of winning this tournament. It takes a lot of work but it’s absolutely doable.’’
Klinsmann is the second German coach to lead the Taegeuk Warriors squad after Uli Stielike.
The 2023 Asian Cup stage is the second appearance for Pizzi after having guided Saudi Arabia in the highest Asian tournament in the 2019 edition where his team were eliminated by Japan in the last 16.
The Argentinian has just guided Bahrain for six months after replacing Helio Sousa in July last year and has had stints with the Chilean national team and several clubs including Valencia.
Ammouta, on the other hand, is the person responsible for helping Jordan achieve their best performance in the Asian Cup after reaching the quarter-finals in 2004 and 2011.
Having coached Qatar’s giant club, Al Sadd, the manager from Morocco was appointed as Jordan’s coach last July to replace Adnan Hamad.
Pan-gon on the other hand, managed to lead the national squad to qualify on merit for the first time since 1980 after just a few months in charge.
