KUALA LUMPUR: The struggles of Selangor, the fallen giants of Malaysian football, are not rooted in tactics or players, but in deeper issues behind the scenes, according to their former player Azlan Johar.
Azlan claimed there is team interference by their management and coaches were changed too quickly.
Amid the latest rumours linking Selangor to ex-Harimau Malaya coach Kim Pan Gon, Azlan said the Red Giants have deteriorated mainly because of instability at the management level.
“One of the biggest reasons is how easily Selangor change coaches,” said Azlan.
Compared to Selangor’s glory days in the 1980s and 1990s, Azlan said stability was once the foundation of their success.
He was also particularly critical of what he described as management “overstepping” into technical matters.
“Back then, Selangor didn’t keep changing coaches. That’s why Selangor were strong.
“Now, they (management) interfere in naming the starting 11 and even in training programmes. These are the things that coaches dislike most,” he said.
Azlan said such interference creates an unhealthy situation in which coaches bear the blame for the results, despite decisions being influenced by management.
“When results don’t come, the coach becomes the target, not the management. Coaches are the ones risking their necks while management does not take accountability for the decisions they made.”
On the rumours linking Selangor to Pan Gon, Azlan warned against chasing top names without addressing structural issues first, and said any new appointments would require significant financial commitment.
“Why change again and start from zero?” he said, urging Selangor to appoint interim coach, Frenchman Christophe Gamel, who has shown consistent results.
“You end up paying more salaries, and in the end, you get nothing. What you chase, you don’t get, and what you already have, you lose,” he said.
Since 2018, Selangor have appointed nine head coaches, a statistic that underlines instability rather than a lack of quality on the touchline.
On average, that works out to roughly one coaching change every season, forcing repeated resets in playing style, squad planning and technical direction.
The Selangor coaches during this period were B. Satianathan, Karsten Neitzel, Michael Feichtenbeiner, Tan Cheng Hoe, Nidzam Jamil and Katsuhito Kinoshi, alongside several short-term or interim appointments that see a revolving-door trend that mirrors Azlan’s warning about impatience at the boardroom level.
* Timesport is trying to get comments from Selangor FC on the issue
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