It’s not often you hear Dion Dublin, the powerful, net-busting centre-forward of nineties and noughties Premier League fame, and Johan Cruyff, the great visionary of Ajax, Barcelona and the Netherlands, mentioned in the same breath. When speaking to Malaysian superstar Dion-Johan Cools, however, the pair are intertwined.
“Both my parents are quite into football,” Dion, for short, told FIFA as he sought to explain the story behind his unique first name. “The story I heard from them is my mum was close to giving birth to me and they were watching Match of The Day. At that time Dion Dublin was playing for Coventry. I think he scored a goal and they said, ‘Oh, Dion is actually a nice name for our son’.” Cools was born in June of 1996 following a 14-goal season from his namesake in the Premier League. The Johan part perhaps needs less explanation.
“My dad was always a big fan of Johan Cruyff, so they mixed it up a little bit and that’s how they came [up] with my name. To be honest, I’m quite happy. It’s quite an original name, you don’t hear it everyday.”
While his parents were living in Belgium at the time, they made the more than 6,000-mile trip back to Southeast Asia so his mother could be with her family. As Dublin was beginning another prolific year in the sky blue of Coventry, and Cruyff was enjoying his early months of retirement from club management following a trophy-laden spell with Barcelona, Cools kicked off his own football journey.
He moved to Belgium with his family as soon as he was able to fly, spending most of his youth years with OH Leuven – with a brief spell at Anderlecht sandwiched in between – going on to make his senior debut for the club in 2014. There, he earned a maiden call-up to the Belgium U-18 side, before helping OHL return to the Jupiler Pro League.
Cools’ adventure in his adopted home continued with a move to Club Brugge in June 2015, where he would dine at the top table of Belgian football and play in the UEFA Champions League, while progressing through the international ranks with the U-19 and U-21 teams. Cools, who can play at centre-back, right-back or in midfield, moved to Denmark and FC Midtjylland in January 2020, beginning a new chapter in his career in every sense of the word.
A year later, then aged 24, Cools was yet to receive senior recognition from Belgium – a squad which Cools admits is “way harder to get into” when compared to the nation of his birth – but he always held a love for Malaysia and never closed that door: “I always told my mother and father, ‘Look, it’s not a clear answer for me that Belgium should be my favourite option’. Of course, the ranking difference between Belgium [and Malaysia] has always been a big thing in the sense that Belgium [has] been number one in the world… I always felt a love towards Malaysian football, the fans and the whole country.”
One phone call in particular sold Cools on the idea of switching allegiances: “A situation came that the Crown Prince of Johor [Tunku Ismail Idris] came with a call and explained that he’s trying to make the national team great again, because they were kind of rock bottom at that moment.
“It’s not a tough decision in the sense of I felt like I wanted to play for Malaysia. I was quite intrigued by his explanation – he sold me. That’s the moment where I decided, ‘Ok, now I’m going to play Malaysia’”.
He made his debut for the national side in June of 2021 against the UAE. It meant that Cools, much like Dublin, capped four times by England, and Cruyff, who inspired the Netherlands into the 1974 FIFA World Cup™ final, was now a senior international footballer.
Cools went from newcomer to leading the side out in double-quick time. Just two years into his Malaysian career, he was sharing the captain’s armband. “Officially, we have four captains in our team, so it can be any of the four who could be wearing the armband,” he said. “The last few games it’s been Matt Davies and myself. It’s something special to be able to be presented to the country as captain.”
Malaysia began their quest to qualify for a first-ever World Cup with the AFC qualifiers in November 2023, as Cools and Co kicked off their campaign in stunning style against Kyrgyz Republic. The defender rose from a corner and met the ball with a Dublin-esque header – “It’s nice to be compared to him!” – to give Malaysia an early lead. Three unanswered goals from the visitors before the hour mark, though, turned the game on its head. “You’re 3-1 [down] thinking, ‘Oh my god, what’s going on, in our home stadium in front of the crowd?’” The fans were soon back on their feet. An own-goal from the away side halved the deficit with just under 20 minutes to go, before Cools once again rose highest in the box to plant an excellent header into the bottom-left corner five minutes later. The National Stadium then erupted once more as Faisal Halim fired home a dramatic, 93rd-minute winner.
“For me personally, [that’s] one of if not the craziest game of my life, I think it’s one of the better moments in my football career,” he said. “It’s something nice you can tell the kids. It was crazy!”
Cools then led the side out as captain in a less dramatic but equally important victory over Chinese Taipei five days later to make sure of the nation’s best start to a qualifying group since Italia ’90. Malaysia, indeed, sit top of Group C. “Our head coach [Kim Pangon] always aimed to reach 12 points and we’re halfway after two games, so that is always an amazing start,” he said. “The mood is good. Our team has already achieved such amazing things.
“We’ve qualified for the Asian Cup, we won two games in the qualifiers. We can still go higher and higher and maybe even beat the bigger teams. We’re in a good way, we have a good squad with good staff as well who have good ambition.
“There’s still a long road to go, but personally if I were able to play in a World Cup then I would have an amazing satisfaction that I might not have even dreamed of. Seeing guys playing in the World Cup in Qatar… [that] was one of the best World Cups I have seen in my life. Being able to be part of that would be absolutely amazing.”
- نویسنده : محمدمهدی اسماعیلی رها
Friday, 18 July , 2025