Kuala Lumpur last hosted the AFC Cup Final in 2019, when the intimate Kuala Lumpur Stadium provided the neutral backdrop for the clash between Lebanon’s Al Ahed and North Korea’s 4.25.
That year, the local team who plays out of the 18,000-capacity venue, KL City FC, were relegated from Malaysia’s top tier, winning just four of 22 games.
If any of the KL City FC players or officials watched that year’s final, they could only look on with envy. Continental glory for the small club from the suburbs of one of Asia’s iconic cities was but a pipedream.
And yet, just a few short years later, having survived the COVID pandemic, KL City FC stand on the precipice of completing one of the most remarkable and unlikely turnarounds in Asian football.
This Saturday they will host Omani side Al-Seeb, themselves out to create history as the first Omani side to win the competition, in the final of the AFC Cup at the Bukit Jalil Stadium.
It has been a stunning turnaround in fortunes for a club that was for so long a “basket case” of Malaysian football.
“KL football was a basket case,” veteran commentator Dez Corkhill told The Asian Game Podcast.
“They were regularly bottom of the table ten years ago, they were mired in all kinds of allegations of corruption and betting scandals.
“They got very few fans. There was a hardcore, maybe 1500 possibly up to 2000, who turned up to the games week in, week out. They didn’t have a home, they couldn’t play at their home stadium and Stan(ley Bernard) walked into that.
“So the team got promoted as the third-placed team in the Premier League. Stan walked into that and he made some football decisions.
“They don’t have the budget of Johor. I’ve got some inkling of the budgets that he works towards, and I know the budgets are amongst the lowest of the league, certainly amongst the lowest of those who pay their players in the league.
“So these are football decisions, but have helped Kuala Lumpur overcome supreme obstacles.”
He continued: “Hopefully crowds will emerge and hopefully Stan’s been able to put the club on a sound financial footing.
“But what they’ve achieved in this last year [Malaysian Cup victory] was astonishing enough. This [AFC Cup] is make believe stuff. For this club of this size to get where they have it’s make believe stuff, but it’s been done on the back of football decisions.”
The Heartbeat of KL
Kuala Lumpur is one of Asia’s iconic city. Think of KL and you probably picture the Petronas towers, dominating a skyline of high rise skyscrapers you would expect in a global hub.
The football club bearing the name of the city is the antithesis of modern Kuala Lumpur. KL City FC is a small club. A club from the suburbs. A club for the working class. Their stadium may have an 18,000-capacity, but it’s not often full.
According to journalist and broadcaster Keeshanan Sundaresan, the club embodies the spirit of the ‘original’ Kuala Lumpur.
“Kuala Lumpur is an incredibly big city, but KL City do not necessarily reflect that,” he explained on The Asian Game Podcast.
“What I mean by that, it’s not in a very derogatory way or negative way whatsoever. It’s just a reflection of Malaysian society and Kuala Lumpur as a city.
“I remember in the aftermath of that Malaysia Cup final, I remember having a chat with a friend of mine who’s a fan of KL, and he said something along the lines of, KL is essentially a city where people from all around the country come (and) park themselves here, try to make a living out of it. But essentially, you wipe away the little bits and things that make KL ‘KL’. The origin story.
“The genesis of Kuala Lumpur city is not something that gets reminded or remembered all the time. Because (when) you come to KL now you’ve got influences from all around Asia, influences from all around Malaysia, different states, different dialects, different lingo. Everything is in Kuala Lumpur.
“But what makes KL ‘KL’, the origins of Kuala Lumpur, that does not get remembered all along.
“But through KL City, the individuals that were born and bred in the suburbs of Kuala Lumpur, in the flats that exists within the small townships in Kuala Lumpur, they get something to hold on to, to be remembered, to have a relationship with the essence of this place as a whole.”
He continued: “I think that’s the most powerful thing about this KL City story. From last year winning the Malaysia Cup, (to) this year, the run it is not about 80,000 people in a stadium week in week out. It’s about a smaller sized group of fans that have had such an incredible experience so far.
“And I think one of the pinnacles of it was at the viewing parties that have been held right smack in the middle of the city (for) the last two away games. The atmosphere there has been absolutely incredible and they would probably (have had) just about 2000 people, but I could compare the intensity of it to like some stadium atmospheres where it has been 80,000 people packed into it.
“So it’s been a really special journey so far, not just from a footballing point of view, but I think also from a cultural point of view for the city of Kuala Lumpur and its original people.”
Omani History
While it’s easy to get swept away in the romance of the KL City FC story, their opponent’s on Saturday night are making history all of their own.
In making the final they have become the first Omani side to do so, and having won the West Asian Zone final 4-0 they pose a sizeable threat to the home side.
“They’ve got a left side player called (Ali) Al-Busaidi who’s a super little player,” Corkhill explained.
“He can play left (or) he can play right. I think he’s got a futsal background, because he can take players on, he can do the little dribbles and he crosses beautifully, but two footed.
“They’ve also got a fella who was at Sepahan last year, Muhsen (Al Ghassani) up front, and (Abdulaziz) Al Muqbali. So I think on the breakaway, they’re not one of these (teams) who’ll pour forward, but when they do break they do get bodies into the penalty area.
“Bizarrely they’ve sacked their coach since they made it into the into the final. So they’ve now got a local coach involved. I’ve never understood that mentality of changing a coach (before a Final).
“They’ve now had the best run of form in the domestic league, where they’re two time defending champions, after only getting promotion in 2017/18, where they’d been also runs for a number of years.”
He continued: “So they’re a newish team under a new local coach. But they’ve got some big scalps, they did really well they beat three-time winners of this competition in the group phases.
“West Asian footballers tend to have this arrogance or cockiness that they are good enough to actually progress through. But traveling Omanis can perhaps just let the occasion get to them.
“So we’ll see if Al-Busaidi plays as well as he can do, and if Muhsen can move – he’s a very mobile striker – then KL may have one or two problems. I think it’ll be very, very cagey in the early stages, because KL don’t exactly come at you like a house on fire, and I think the Omanis will do the same as well. But then, I think once we get beyond the nervy first 30 minutes this could be a fascinating game of football.”
Predictions
KL City FC may be the home side, but are they the favourites? Our expert guests provide their prediction ahead of Saturday night.
KEESHANAN SUNDARESAN
“Look, on Saturday, I’m going to do the studio show, but for a Malaysian broadcaster, not for the world feed, so I don’t have to be as objective as Dez is going to be with this prediction. I’m going to go a bit biased, a vintage KL City (performance), minimal possession, but a major smash and grab, 1-0 victory on the night. So hopefully, that happens.”
DEZ CORKHILL
“Well from a for a purely footballing perspective, you’ve got to say that Al-Seeb are favorites. Even though they’re coming to a foreign land, the way they’ve dispatched their teams in the group stages, the hurdles that they’ve overcome, and the money that they spend, they spend good money on their local players. Plus, West Asia have won 15 of 17 of the AFC Cups that have been fought for already. So I would say, and I hope I’m neutrally wrong, but I would say that Al-Seeb come into this match as favourites and they would probably take the win.”
STANLEY BERNARD
“We are the underdogs. This is absolutely spot on. Thanks for saying that, it helps. That’s exactly falling into where we are. We love punching above weight. So we will go in, we will keep the expectations realistic. But if they’re (Al-Seeb) going to win, they’ve got to work really hard. So my role here will be to keep the expectations a bit realistic and lower the energy a little bit until they get to the match actually. We’re gonna enjoy (it), the club is enjoying the moment. So the approach would be the same; just going in with a lot of belief and try to make history again.”
PHOTO: the-AFC.com
Listen to Episode 94 of The Asian Game Podcast as we preview the 2022 AFC Cup Final
