MELAKA – Without their star player, Safawi Rasid, the Johor Darul Ta’zim (JDT) team can still give their best performance in the upcoming Malaysia Cup, after winning 5-0 against Melaka last night in the Super League match.
JDT’s coach Benjamin Mora said although the team misses their top striker, but he believed it is a huge chance for other players to get involved in preparations for the Malaysia Cup campaign.
“JDT is not about one player even if his name is Safawi and we love him, he is a great and spectacular player… he is confident and believes it’s a good for him to play in a foreign country, but what is important for the club now is we have to play together as a collective team.
“Someone is gonna take his place… at the end of the day we need to see how our players finish tonight. We need to see how many days we have to plan and to train to get there,” he told a press conference last night after the match.
Mora said after this they have to plan especially on rotating players who did not have chances to play in the previous games as this will give confidence to them to play in the Malaysia Cup.
Earlier, JDT won after thrashing Melaka 5-0 last night in the Super League match at Stadium Hang Jebat, here.
Two goals were scored by JDT’s import player, Leandro Velazquez, the first goal was in a penalty shoot-out in the 70th minute and the second goal was during added time. Meanwhile the other goals were scored by Syafiq Ahmad in the 75th minute, Aidil Zafuan Abd Razak (79th minute) and Fernando Ortega (85th minute).
Meanwhile, Melaka head coach, Zainal Abidin Hassan said that he was disappointed with last night’s game.
However, Zainal is still proud of his boys as they succeeded in putting up a good defence performance during the first half of the match.
Regardless of the game, JDT lived up to their billings when they defended their Super League title for the seventh consecutive time after winning every game this season.
— BERNAMA
