KUALA LUMPUR: Kuching City coach Aidil Sharin Sahak revealed how television analysis helped shape his tactical approach as his injury-hit side stunned Selangor 2-0 after extra time to reach their first FA Cup final on Sunday.
With only 48 hours to recover from continental travel, no pitch-training sessions and seven key players sidelined by injuries, Aidil had to find a way to overturn Selangor’s 2-1 first-leg advantage.
He found inspiration from an unlikely source – football pundit and fellow coach Yusri Che Lah.
“Every game we learn. And I want to say thanks to my friend on Astro, Yusri. He kept talking about how good their number 10 (Selangor’s Eduardo Sosa) is. So tonight, we killed their number 10,” Aidil said.
Aidil tasked Kaishu Yamazaki and Ryan Lambert with controlling the midfield and disrupting Selangor’s attacking rhythm.
“That was one of the tactical plans. You could see Kaishu worked very hard alongside Ryan Lambert in the middle. We killed their number 10 (Sosa) and number 9 (Hugo Boumous) to make sure that the service for number 91 (Fernandez) more or less didn’t arrive in the box,” he said.
“The boys followed the game plan with incredible hard work and dedication.”
Aidil also took online critics to task who questioned his team selections, pointing to the injury problems that had limited his options.
“Hopefully there aren’t too many keyboard warriors asking, ‘Why never put this player, why never put that player?’ Nowadays, there are too many keyboard warriors and too many coaches on Facebook,” he said.
Among those unavailable were Gabriel Peres and Ronald Ngah, both recovering from knee surgery, while Jimmy Raymond was sidelined with a broken foot.
The shortage of options forced natural forward Joao Pedro to play at left-back to help contain national player Quentin Cheng on the flank.
However, Pedro had to be substituted at half-time after suffering a hamstring problem.
“Pedro had a hamstring issue today, that’s why I took him off. It wasn’t because of performance. It’s not new for him to play left-back and we needed the overlapping numbers against national player Quentin. But after half-time, he was flat on the ground,” he said.
Despite the injury setbacks, Kuching held on through extra time to secure a 3-2 aggregate victory and a place in the final, where they will face Johor Darul Ta’zim at the Sultan Ibrahim Stadium on Jan 16.