Malaysia team receives bad news about naturalized players

(Dan Tri) - The Malaysian team will participate in an important tournament with teams that have tickets to the 2026 World Cup, including Iran and Uzbekistan, this coming September. However, naturalized players are at risk of not participating in this tournament.

Malaysia will be present in the 2025 CAFA Cup. This tournament will feature teams from Iran, Uzbekistan, Oman, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Afghanistan. Of these, Iran and Uzbekistan are strong teams, having already secured tickets to the 2026 World Cup.

Naturalized Malaysian players may not be able to participate in the CAFA Cup with West Asian and Central Asian teams (Photo: VFF).

The Malaysian team has high expectations for the CAFA Cup, where they can improve their level. However, the difficulty for the team nicknamed Harimau Malaya is that their best naturalized players will not be able to participate in the said tournament.

The CAFA Cup takes place from August 26 to September 9. However, this period is difficult for Malaysian naturalized players. The reason is that this is the period when the summer transfer window takes place, Malaysian naturalized players can move to new teams and their new teams may not allow them to participate in the CAFA Cup.

Speaking to Malaysian media, Harimau Malaya coach Petr Cklamovski (Australian-Macedonian) said: “At the earliest, my players can only join the national team from September 1, to participate in the CAFA Cup. However, their presence or absence will be subject to the condition that their clubs must give permission.”

Naturalized players make up almost all of the strength of the Malaysian team (Photo: VFF).

“Whether or not the players’ clubs allow it depends on FIFA’s match schedule. Currently, many clubs still do not know exactly what their match schedule will be like in the new season?

For example, the schedule of defender Garces in La Liga (Spain) has not been announced yet. The same goes for some other tournaments. Only when we know the schedule of the clubs, can we work to have the players play for the Malaysian team," added Mr. Petr Cklamovski.

The most important naturalized players of the Malaysian team include Facundo Garces (Alaves Club, Spain), Gabriel Palmero (Tenerife, Spain), Joao Figueiredo (Istanbul Basaksehir, Türkiye) in Europe, Imanol Machuca (Velez Sarsfield, Argentina) and Rodrigo Holgado (America de Cali, Colombia).

These are the players who contributed greatly to helping the Malaysian team defeat the Vietnamese team on June 10, in the third qualifying round of the 2027 Asian Cup.

Source: https://dantri.com.vn/the-thao/doi-tuyen-malaysia-nhan-tin-khong-vui-ve-dan-cau-thu-nhap-tich-20250626145414609.htm