CHAPTER 76: Malaysian National Football Squad vs. MyTeam

“Adakah anda LAYAK untuk menyertai MyTeam?” – Serbegeth Singh

On last Sunday night, a match occurred in Stadium Bukit Jalil. It was a football (soccer) match between the Malaysian national football squad against a team called MyTeam.

MyTeam has been a ‘reality tv’ show that’s been around on local TV since…..somewhere during March I think. It’s a program that gathers a group of people from around Malaysia, searching for the best and unearthing new talents from men who are not professional football players. The objective was to gather the best 23 guys to play as a football team, to face up against the Malaysian football team.
The MyTeam was selected and trained under a group of trainers, headed by none other than the “Face of Malaysian Football Pundit”, ex-Malaysian footballer and captain Serbegeth Singh, aka Shebby. And supposedly, this MyTeam program is the brainchild of (son-in-law) menantu Pak Lah Badawi, vice-boss Pemuda UMNO Khairy Jamaludin.
Actually, I don’t know much about this MyTeam, as I never really saw the weekly episodes on TV3, as the timing of the airing of the show is inflexible in terms of the assignments, studying and contemplating that was needed for studying (you know, the usual college/university crap sh-t).
Anyway, the point is that I saw the match on TV last Sunday, but I only saw the remaining 10-15 minutes of the first half only as well as the 2^nd half.
Just to see how this match was being played.
MyTeam took the lead first, in the first half. I was shocked to notice that, and laughed. If the score was to be favourable for MyTeam, I think that the Malaysian squad will surely be victimized in certain ways (all in regarding the quality of our football nowadays and the past years).
Well, the score in the end was the Malaysian football squad won 2-1.

The first and final goals were quality though. The first (from MyTeam) was a lob from out of the 18 yard box from a skinny tall Indian guy who (according to the commentators) had the nickname ‘Robinho’ (……..oh brother…), and the final goal was from an excellent freekick. The 2^nd goal too was from a freekick.

Overall, of course it wasn’t on par with world class, and my impression was that it was just like watching Malaysian football.
Anyway, the ridiculous thing was that, in the first half, both teams had a player sent off for rough play. And I found out that both teams themselves like to play rough and dirty, showing studs all in some situations. It wasn’t supposed to be an intense league match where you need to win to survive; it was supposed to be just a friendly.
Anyhow, the Malaysian (actually, more like the Malaysian Under-20 squad, ‘cause the Malaysian team that played that night only had 3 senior Malaysian players, the rest all were from the under-20 squad) team were doing the more attacking and pushing as they were chasing the game for some time. By the time they scored their first goal, they were a bit more relaxed and composed. Most of the final 10 minutes, the Malaysian youngsters were just passing the ball around to themselves, but the last 5 minutes of the game, it was very intense as MyTeam had the ball more and they kept on attacking and getting forward the Malaysian goal. One of the MyTeam players even made a close shot that unfortunately hit the top bar, in something like the 91st minute or so.

The match ended, the crowd that came, the TV showed they all celebrated (they looked more like coming to watch a carnival JomHeboh rather than watching a football match).
The medal presentation were given by the PM himself, with his ever presence son in law helping him handling out the medals.
Shebby got a loud, respective ovation from the crowd.
I guess that he’ll be back in no time to be commentating on football ESPN in Singapore with the usual gang, since the World Cup is now nearer.
But I wonder whether Shebby’s stint with MyTeam would consider him moving in football management….

Well, that’s it, I got nothing left to say. Anyway, here’s a blog post I found regarding MyTeam's match as well.
It’s the first kind of match to be played in Malaysia.