
Continuing our series on some of the legendary players who have played in the Asean Football Championship, we profile Malaysia's Safee Sali, whose key goals in 2010 helped the Tigers to lift the AFF Suzuki Cup for the first time. ( Photo: 29 august 2012)
When it comes to any conversation about Malaysian football legends, you cannot go too far without mentioning the name of the late Mokhtar Dahari.
Highly skilled, strong and with a keen eye for goal, the talismanic striker was the icon of the Malaysia team during the 1970s when the Tigers twice qualified for the Olympics, twice won the South-East Asian Games gold medal and was generally considered as one of the best sides in Asia.
Since the international retirement of 'Supermokh' in 1985 and his tragic death from motor neurone disease at the age of 38 just six years later, Malaysia have struggled to find a worthy successor to their legendary forward. But in Safee Sali, they may finally have found a player fit to don the legendary No.10 shirt.
Often likened to the great Mokhtar because of his stocky build, Safee has developed a similar knack for leading the line and scoring crucial goals for his country. Nowhere was that more apparent than in the AFF Suzuki Cup 2010 when he scored five goals to win the Golden Boot and fire Malaysia to their first-ever Asean Football Championship title.
Safee's final goal of the competition, in the second leg of the final against Indonesia, epitomised just how similar he is to Mokhtar in terms of his playing style and his scoring ability. Prowling near the halfway line, he spotted an opportunity when Ashari Samsuddin intercepted an errant pass in the Malaysian half and made a powerful run forward to receive the ball from the midfielder, outpacing two Indonesian defenders before firing a rising shot past goalkeeper Markus Harison to give Malaysia an unassailable four-goal advantage.
"It was a big moment for me – perhaps the most important goal that I had ever scored for my team," said Safee, who broke out of a scoring drought to net all of his five goals in just four games.
"I had been worried that I had not been able to score in the first three games but I stayed calm and thanks to the good work of my teammates, I managed to score some important goals."
Safee built on his success at the AFF Suzuki Cup by signing for Indonesian Super League side Pelita Jaya and he has proven a huge hit there, scoring at a prolific rate and taking over the club captaincy as well as signing a new contract that made him the most expensive Malaysian player ever.
It capped another milestone in the amazing rise of the 28-year-old who some see as the key to a new golden age for Malaysian football.
The highly regarded youngster made his professional debut at the age of 19 in 2003 for second division side Kuala Lumpur. He spent two seasons there before a successful one-year spell at Sarawak where he was the club's leading scorer with 19 goals during the 2005-06 season, a prolific return that would earn him a dream move to his home state club, Selangor, where he was handed Mokhtar Dahari's old shirt number.
Safee's club form earned him his first senior international call-up in 2006 but he missed the 2007 Asean Football Championship after suffering an ankle injury and played only 53 minutes in the Tigers' disappointing Asian Cup campaign later that year when Norizan Bakar's side were comprehensively beaten in their three games by China, Uzbekistan and Iran.
Norizan was replaced by B. Sathianathan after the Asian Cup and the new Malaysia coach made Safee a regular in his line-up for the Merdeka Cup in 2008 when he netted four goals to help his side to reach the final, which they lost on penalties to Vietnam.
Safee kept his place for the AFF Suzuki Cup that December and he made an excellent start in that competition, scoring two goals in a 3-0 win over Laos. However, defeats by Vietnam and Thailand saw Malaysia fail to reach the semi-finals for only the second time in the history of the tournament.
Sathianathan kept his job after that tournament but he did not last much longer as a 5-0 home loss to the United Arab Emirates the following month saw him replaced by K.Rajagobal.
Safee believes that the elevation of the under-23 coach was the key factor in Malaysia's turnaround in fortunes at the 2010 AFF Suzuki Cup.
"It was disappointing that we failed to get past the group stage in 2008 because we had good players but I think that we were not well prepared. The key difference in 2010 was that we had a lot of the young players who had won the gold medal at the SEA Games in 2009 under coach Rajagobal and we were all highly motivated to do well under him at the Suzuki Cup," says Safee, who at the age of 26 was the second oldest player in that Suzuki Cup squad.
"Many of us had played under him in the youth squad and we all regarded him as a very good coach who knew how to organise and motivate us well. That made a big difference as we all worked together well as teammates and that made us stronger as a team."
The 2010 tournament did not begin well for Malaysia as they were crushed 5-1 by Indonesia in their opening game in Jakarta but a goalless draw against Thailand and a 5-1 win over Laos saw them progress safely to the semi-finals.
Safee though had failed to score in any of the group matches and the pressure was on him when they faced defending champions Vietnam in the semi-finals. However, Rajagobal kept his faith in his striker and he was rewarded with a virtuoso display in the first leg in Kuala Lumpur.
Safee had a goal disallowed for offside early in the second half but he kept plugging away and on the hour mark, he got his head to a free-kick by Safiq Rahim that Vietnam goalkeeper Bui Tan Truong allowed to slip out of his gloves and over his shoulder into his net.
It was just the stroke of luck that Safee needed to kick start his campaign and he added a second 10 minutes from time by snapping up a rebound after Tan Truong had spilled Safiq's shot.
A goalless draw in Hanoi sent Malaysia through to their first appearance in the Asean Football Championship in 16 years where they would once again face the Indonesians, who had so comprehensively beaten them in their opening match. That heavy loss could have demoralised the team but instead, it had the opposite effect of galvanising the squad for the rest of the tournament.
"The result of our first game against Indonesia was really disappointing and after that we had to treat every game in that competition like it was a final," says Safee.
"When we met Indonesia again in the final, we were determined to prove that we were the better team especially in the first leg on our home ground. We wanted to show that we were not a team that would normally lose 5-1 and we proved that by winning the match."
A confident Safee proved too much for the Indonesians to handle as he netted twice in a 3-0 rout in the first leg in Kuala Lumpur before bagging the killer goal in the return match in Jakarta to finish as the tournament's leading scorer.
Given his goalscoring exploits, it was not surprising that Safee was a player in demand after the Suzuki Cup and he returned to Indonesia two months after the tournament to join Pelita. It marked the first time that the forward had played his club football outside Malaysia and he feels that he has benefitted enormously from the experience of playing abroad.
"I've gained a lot of experience from playing over there because it's a highly competitive league with a lot of good import players," says Safee, who remains the only player in the current Malaysia squad plying his trade outside the country.
"My level of confidence has improved a lot since I moved to the Indonesian league and I hope that some of my Malaysian teammates could also make that move because I think that there is a lot that they could learn from playing outside the country."
But whether his national teammates remain in Malaysia or play abroad, Safee has every confidence that the Tigers have all the necessary ingredients to retain their AFF Suzuki Cup title this year.
"We have played well in our recent friendly matches but we still have time for more improvement before the tournament starts," he says.
"I think we have a very good chance of winning the competition again. We are very confident that we can do something again so hopefully, we can continue to play well and have a big moment for the country once again. ( source: AFC)
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