Cruising the Brazilian way

When Orangeman highlighted on Bola@Mamak over Astro SuperSport 811 a few months back of the prodigious talent of Kumaahran Sathasivam, I quickly texted him to find out more about the 15-year old lad. Read the story on goal.com here.

Shortly after, the man who discovered Kumaahran, Jaino Matos, contacted me via Orangeman.

"We have this football project in Penang, where I prepare the boys for a career in football,and if they deserve and they are capable of an international career, last August I took 5 boys to Brazil for trial in the club.


"I also work for "Cruzeiro Esporte Clube" the club which reveled Ronaldo, Ramires and many other Brazilians Nationals, and one of the boys I brought to Brazil,has been approved, and on February 22nd, I will personally take him back to Brazil to report for training, even for Brazilians, Rizal having this opportunity is one of a kind, hundreds of kids line up a week for trial and our Malaysian boy made it, I have always believed in Malaysian potential, the "raw material" is immense, that is why I am here, and I believe you could join us to raise awareness about facts that I already made a scientific research about it, "The Brazilian Influence" in Asia for the last 40 years. The style of playing football in Malaysia fits perfectly the way Brazil plays, there are so many similarities as far I am concerned, imagine Nazmi "The new Golden Boy" living in Brazil for 5 years,imagine what he will become.


The whole Middle East, Japan has implemented the Brazilian methodology for over 40 years, brother Rizal, Saudis and Japanese boys are sent to Brazil as early as 12 or 13 years old and that is the "key" of them being the most successful Asian football nations, Kuwait after ONLY 4 years program in Brazil they qualified for the 1980 Olympic Games in Moscow,they won the AFC Asian Cup in 1980 and they qualified for the World Cup in Spain/1982, why Malaysia can not do it? So the question is how can we make this happen in Malaysia? Would this topic be nice for "Dengan Izin"? Because we really like you to join us and make this dream possible.


Malaysia memang boleh brother tapi we need to go through the right way, I would love to continue this conversation with you personally if you are interested of course.

I tend to agree with Jaino but with Malaysian football, there are a lot of factors involved in a player's development. In Brazil, football is being played everywhere, from the beaches, the futsal centres right up to the streets.

I remember Datuk Yap Nyim Keong, former assistant general secretary of FAM, attended a course in Brazil. So have so many others from FAM. And in 2002, with Datuk Dell Akbar Khan as the general secretary of FAM, hired Jorvan Vieira to take charge of the Under-19 team, Joao Paolo Nizzo (under-17 team), Silvio Machado (futsal) and Ralf Borges (fitness). Borges later took charge of the Pahang team for a brief period. Read my intro for the Malay Mail here.

While Vieira is best remembered for Iraq's historic win in the Asian Cup in 2007, FAM had a bad experience with the Brazilian much earlier. He was replaced by Datuk K. Rajagobal 11 days before the Asian Youth Championship finals in Malaysia in 2004 following a damning report by the then team manager, Datuk Azzuddin Ahmad, who felt Vieira had no clue on who were the players to form the core of the team. In came Rajagobal and the rest is history.

Machado or Lula, well, read here.

But I am an eternal optimist, open to ideas...I hope Jaino has the patience and perseverance to help facilitate our progress.

Thanks to Jaino, Kumaahran (second from left) cruised to the samba school of Cruzeiro in August and bound for a second stint in February