February 25 – Malaysia, Singapore, Solomon Islands and Oman will compete in the inaugural Airmarine 2019 Cup in Malaysia in March.
Hosted by the Malaysian FA the tournament is seen as important preparation in advance of World Cup 2022 qualifying later this year. It is also an opportunity for Malaysia, who didn’t qualify for the just completed Asian Cup in the UAE, to improve their world ranking.
Malaysia currently are 167th in the rankings, the 35th ranked Asian team. The first 34 ranked Asian teams automatically go into the World Cup qualification second round. Teams ranked 35 to 46 will have to go through a first round knockout qualification.
The 2022 World Cup qualifiers will also serve as qualification for the 24-team 2023 Asian Cup to be held in either China or South Korea (venue to be decided at the upcoming AFC Congress in April).
Good results against Oman (ranked 90th), Solomon Islands (ranked 143rd) and Singapore (ranked 165th) would boost Malaysia with the necessary ranking points to move up. Oman reached the last 16 of the Asian Cup last month.
Though not having qualified for the 2019 Asian Cup, the Malaysians have shown improving form having narrowly lost the AFF 2018 Suzuki Cup final 3-2 to Vietnam on aggregate. Vietnam lost 1-0 in the quarter finals of the Asian Cup to Japan.
“It is about how to make the national team and our rankings better. We need to be in the best 34 in Asia when the qualifiers come around to avoid the first round. We are currently in 35th position, so hopefully with this we can help the team to push up the rankings,” said Malaysia’s Datuk Wira Yusoff Mahadi.
While this is the first time Malaysia has held this tournament, event organisers hope it will be the start of a regular competition. This year it clashes with AFC U23 Championship qualifiers though Malaysia have said they will not select any players involved in U23 qualification duty.
The Airmarine Cup will be drawn next week. Two semi-final matches played back-to-back on March 20 with the winners and losers playing each other respectively on March 23.
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