Thailand's Siam Sport newspaper wrote: "The Malaysian national team has announced its withdrawal from the 2025 CAFA Cup. The tournament will be held in Tajikistan."
“The tournament dates are announced to be from August 29 to September 8. These are days that are not part of FIFA Days (days when national teams around the world are on international duty, according to the FIFA calendar).
The Malaysian team (in yellow) announced their withdrawal from the 2025 CAFA Cup (Photo: VFF).
This has led to many clubs refusing to release players to the national teams. The Malaysian team faced difficulties with the above issue, they withdrew from the tournament because they did not have key players, due to clubs refusing to release players to the Malaysian team,” Siam Sport added.
The current mainstays of the Malaysian national team are all naturalized players, mainly playing for clubs abroad. Without naturalized players in the squad, it will be difficult for Malaysia to compete on equal terms with teams from Central Asia and West Asia at the 2025 CAFA Cup.
Siam Sport continued: “A number of Malaysian players are playing in Spain, Japan, Argentina and Colombia. The Malaysian team said that they could not bring players from the above tournaments to join the team at the CAFA Cup. Therefore, Malaysia’s presence in this tournament became ineffective.”
“Most of the key players of the Malaysian team cannot leave their clubs to participate in tournaments outside of FIFA Days. In the end, the Malaysian team decided to withdraw from the 2025 CAFA Cup,” is still the line written in Thailand’s leading sports daily.
Most of the current key players of the Malaysian team are naturalized players playing abroad (Photo: ASEAN Football).
Meanwhile, the ASEAN Football website, which specializes in Southeast Asian football, shared: “The Football Association of Malaysia (FAM) announced that their team will not participate in the 2025 CAFA Cup. FAM said that changes in the match schedule will affect the players' schedules.”
“The tournament was originally announced to be held during the official FIFA international calendar days. However, that is not happening now. This change has led to many clubs refusing to release players to the Malaysian national team.
This is a huge challenge for "Harimau Malaya", especially when their squad has players playing in Spain, Argentina, Colombia, and Japan," ASEAN Football added.
Also on the ASEAN Football website, this media channel quoted Malaysia coach Peter Cklamovski: “Once we appear in international tournaments, we have to be ready to show our full strength. But at present, this has become unrealistic for the Malaysian team, because we cannot bring our best players to Tajikistan.”
Source: https://dantri.com.vn/the-thao/bao-dong-nam-a-phan-ung-khi-doi-tuyen-malaysia-bo-giai-quoc-te-20250717124447413.htm
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