Rush Back to the Drawing Board-lah

Former Liverpool striker Ian Rush has confirmed the Football Association of Malaysia have contacted him about a possible role with the national team.

Rush, who is currently the elite performance director of the Welsh Football Trust, has been earmarked as part of the restructuring of the national team in the wake of a string of poor performances.

In last year's Asian Cup, which Malaysia co-hosted, they failed to win a match in the group stage and scored just one goal. Malaysia were also eliminated in the first round of qualifiers for the 2010 World Cup in November.

'I have been asked to have a look at their strikers, but it has got no further than that at the moment,' said 46-year-old Rush.

'I will be having another chat with them when I get back from Portugal, where I am at the moment on a break. Maybe sometime next week I will be in a better position to make a decision.

'If it did happen I would probably go out there a couple of times for a short visit, but it would have to fit in with my current job with the Welsh FA Trust, helping to bring their kids through.

'So at the moment I can't confirm anything really, I will know more in a week or so.'

Malaysia national team coach B. Sathianathan will also spend three weeks with Premier League champions Manchester United, and will work with Sir Alex Ferguson's assistant Carlos Queiroz.

Sathianathan, who replaced Norizan Bakar last August, told the Star Newspaper: 'This a great chance for me to learn from the best.

'The national team will not be in training during that period and I can spend time learning and looking at ways to further improve our team.'

[i had posted somewhere inside a forum not long ago(after losing 5-1 and 5-0 to China and Uzbekistan respectively in the 2007 Asian Cup) - it doesn't matter whose the national coach, even though you bring in Jose Mourinho or Sven Goran Eriksson, we would still become the whipping boys of SEA if the mentality do not change. You gotta learn the proper way of applying tactics, passing,technique etc... In Europe, every football club has its own academy where they train their youngsters as young as 8 years old.

This situation is made worse when we have some political idiots who do not understand the nature of football helming top positions.Why they were there? Of course for their own personal agenda-lah.]