Coach Masatada Ishii is angry and criticizes the Thai Football Federation for being dishonest.

According to information from Thai media, the FAT Board of Directors, headed by Vice President Chanwit Pholchiwin, had a meeting with Masatada Ishii on October 21, then informed the Japanese head coach about the early termination of the contract.

However, coach Ishii was surprised by the FAT's decision. On his Instagram story, he said that the FAT had summoned him to a meeting at the federation headquarters at 10am with the purpose of "re-evaluating the two matches with Chinese Taipei".

"After the evaluation, they suddenly told me, 'Your contract will be terminated from today' with the reason 'wanting to change the entire coaching staff of the national teams at all age levels'. I could not accept this immediately, so I replied to them, 'Okay, we can discuss this at another time' and left without signing any papers. However, in the afternoon of the same day, FAT announced that I was fired," Coach Ishii wrote.

He then accused FAT of being "dishonest" in their behavior when they unilaterally fired him without any serious discussion between the two sides. The Japanese strategist thought he would sit down with FAT to discuss at another time, but the verdict was soon given.

Coach Ishii took over the Thai national team in December 2023 and led the War Elephants to 30 matches. He won 16 of them, achieving a winning rate of 53.3%. The 63-year-old strategist's greatest achievement was winning the King's Cup 2024, while he could not help Thailand win the ASEAN Cup 2024 at home (losing to Vietnam with a total score of 3-5).