BY ZULHILMI ZAINAL Follow on Twitter
Although Malaysia U23 have been drawn against Middle Eastern teams in Group C of the 2018 AFC U-23 Championship, striker Thanabalan Nadarajah is not perturbed about the seeming physical disadvantage faced by his side.
When met by the press at the Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA) before leaving with the team for the second phase of their centralised camp in South Korea, Thanabalan said that the Young Tigers will be relying on one advantage they have over their group opponents; Iraq, Jordan and Saudi Arabia.
"Of course Arab players are physically bigger than us, but we have the advantage of speed over them. We can beat them using pace.
"We must not be too concerned about the different in size, after all even [Lionel] Messi is small in size! So we must keep our belief and remember that our opponents are just normal players, and we must take them on normally," remarked the 22-year old forward on Saturday.
According to the Negeri Sembilan striker, the Young Tigers can also count on one improved aspect in the finals; their cohesion.
"In Korea we'll be playing in three friendly matches, perhaps after these matches the team cohesion and chemistry in the player pairings will be more apparent to the coach," noted the 2017 Southeast Asian Games joint top-scorer.
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