At noon on June 9, coach Peter Cklamovski of the Malaysian team attended a press conference before the match with the Vietnam team in the second match of Group F of the 2027 Asian Cup final qualifiers.
Here, the issue of newly naturalized Malaysian players received much attention, especially when the media and fans of this country expressed doubts about the origin and legality of the naturalization process of 3 players of Argentine origin, Imanol Machuca, Rodrigo Holcado and facundo Garces, along with Jon Irazabal from Spain and Joao figureiredo from Brazil.
When asked about this information, coach Peter Cklamovski said: "There is no problem. We are well prepared. A few new players have joined the team. They come from many different places, returning here with the pride of being Malaysian citizens.
We felt the family atmosphere here. We will show that solidarity tomorrow. We will not leave opinions outside that distract us. That discussion only cares about outsiders".
"I think everything is going in the right direction. We have prepared carefully both physically and tactically. Especially improving physical fitness.
Most of the players have finished the season since the end of April, so they are now very ready. I will turn this team into a high-performance team.
My goal is to help Malaysia become a team approaching world class. Therefore, physical strength is a prerequisite factor. This has been proven in recent friendly matches.
The entire squad is very well prepared. There are 5 new players coming to the training camp, but they are well connected with this "family", they are trained well, have good physical strength and are ready to play well tomorrow," coach Peter Cklamovski added.
Coach Peter Cklamovski emphasized the goal of helping Malaysia beat the Vietnamese team after 10 years.
He said: "We also want to win every match. That is a challenge for all the players and the coaching staff. It has been 10 years since Malaysia beat Vietnam. But tomorrow we will rewrite history.
We know about the personal skills of Vietnamese players, I really respect the Vietnamese players. This will be a challenge for us. I look forward to this challenge. The inability to defeat Vietnam in the past 10 years is a motivation for Malaysia in the upcoming match.
Our closed practice is to focus on the training session. We will focus our best, without interruption to get a victory tomorrow against the Vietnam team.
"The Vietnam team is a team with a very strong spirit. Maybe outsiders underestimate the process we create here. They have underestimated us, we respect that opinion, we consider it a motivation, a challenge to build a history that we have not won against Vietnam in the past 10 years", coach Peter Cklamovski emphasized.
The match between Malaysia and Vietnam will take place tomorrow (June 10) at Bukit Jalil Stadium (Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia).