The Football Association of Malaysia lost three top technical staff members in the middle of June 2026. They left in just two days. The head coach, Peter Cklamovski, quit. Seiya Imazaki, a member of the technical staff who had worked directly with him, quit on June 16. Mohd Yazid Mohd Yassin quit as U-23 goalkeeper coach the day before. Both parties agreed to the change. The timing was close enough to make it seem like these weren’t a bunch of separate decisions.
When Cklamovski got to Malaysia, he brought with him a certain qualification: he had been a club football coach in Japan for seven years before taking the job with the national team. His background helped him get hired by FAM at a time when Southeast Asian football administrators looked to Japan’s methodical approach to player development and tactical organization as a model. As for whether he was able to bring useful parts of that approach to the Malaysian system in the time he had, that question will have different answers depending on who you ask. What is clear is that the deal stopped before the project came to a final conclusion.
As an interim head coach, Tan Cheng Hoe has been named. Fans of Malaysian football will recognize his name from managing the senior national team during a time when the Harimau Malaya had some of their best results in recent years. His return in a temporary role gives the program some continuity, but it also shows that FAM still doesn’t have a fixed answer to the question of who should run the program. An appointment in the middle of the schedule keeps things moving. It doesn’t answer the bigger question.
It’s worth mentioning that Mohd Yazid has left the U-23 goalkeeping group. At the international level, coaching goalkeepers is a specialized job that is hard to fill because of the technical requirements and the fact that it takes time to build a relationship with players. The U-23 program is the direct route to the senior squad. Losing that continuity in the middle of a competition cycle leaves a hole that needs to be filled quickly by the company, even though the bigger picture of coaching is still not clear.
Malaysian football has had coaching changes before, and the process usually goes like this: a foreign hire with a certain track record, a period of getting used to the new coach, results that are hard to judge because of the difference between ambition and resources, and then a parting that is described as mutual or friendly, no matter what the real feelings are. After that, there is generally a search process where Tan Cheng Hoe or another trusted family member keeps the line open. This situation is similar enough to that pattern to feel like it’s been seen before.
It’s not as clear where the permanent appointment will go. The market for coaches for Southeast Asian national teams has become more competitive as funds have grown and people in the region expect their teams to do better. FAM will be looking for someone who can work with the limitations of Malaysian football, such as limited preparation time, a deep squad, and conflicts between club and national calendars. This person will also need to be able to get results in the increasingly difficult AFC qualification cycles. That’s a tough thing to say in a job posting, and it’s even tougher to find someone who will accept it.
At the moment, Tan Cheng Hoe is in charge. It doesn’t matter if FAM has officially announced the search or not; it has already begun.
