It\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
\u201cBoth my parents are quite into football,\u201d Dion, for short, told FIFA as he sought to explain the story behind his unique first name. \u201cThe 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, \u2018Oh, Dion is actually a nice name for our son\u2019.\u201d 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.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy 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\u2019m quite happy. It\u2019s quite an original name, you don\u2019t hear it everyday.\u201d<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
He moved to Belgium with his family as soon as he was able to fly, spending most of his youth years with OH Leuven \u2013 with a brief spell at Anderlecht sandwiched in between \u2013 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.<\/p>\n
Cools\u2019 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.<\/p>\n
A year later, then aged 24, Cools was yet to receive senior recognition from Belgium \u2013 a squad which Cools admits is \u201cway harder to get into\u201d when compared to the nation of his birth \u2013 but he always held a love for Malaysia and never closed that door: \u201cI always told my mother and father, \u2018Look, it\u2019s not a clear answer for me that Belgium should be my favourite option\u2019. 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\u2026 I always felt a love towards Malaysian football, the fans and the whole country.\u201d<\/p>\n
One phone call in particular sold Cools on the idea of switching allegiances: \u201cA situation came that the Crown Prince of Johor [Tunku Ismail Idris] came with a call and explained that he\u2019s trying to make the national team great again, because they were kind of rock bottom at that moment.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not a tough decision in the sense of I felt like I wanted to play for Malaysia. I was quite intrigued by his explanation \u2013 he sold me. That\u2019s the moment where I decided, \u2018Ok, now I\u2019m going to play Malaysia\u2019\u201d.<\/p>\n
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\u2122 final, was now a senior international footballer.<\/p>\n
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\u2019s armband. \u201cOfficially, we have four captains in our team, so it can be any of the four who could be wearing the armband,\u201d he said. \u201cThe last few games it\u2019s been Matt Davies and myself. It\u2019s something special to be able to be presented to the country as captain.\u201d<\/p>\n
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 \u2013 \u201cIt\u2019s nice to be compared to him!\u201d \u2013 to give Malaysia an early lead. Three unanswered goals from the visitors before the hour mark, though, turned the game on its head. \u201cYou’re 3-1 [down] thinking, \u2018Oh my god, what\u2019s going on, in our home stadium in front of the crowd?\u2019\u201d 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.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor me personally, [that\u2019s] one of if not the craziest game of my life, I think it\u2019s one of the better moments in my football career,” he said. “It\u2019s something nice you can tell the kids. It was crazy!\u201d<\/p>\n
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\u2019s best start to a qualifying group since Italia ’90. Malaysia, indeed, sit top of Group C. \u201cOur head coach [Kim Pangon] always aimed to reach 12 points and we\u2019re halfway after two games, so that is always an amazing start,” he said. \u201cThe mood is good. Our team has already achieved such amazing things. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve 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\u2019re in a good way, we have a good squad with good staff as well who have good ambition.<\/p>\n
“There\u2019s 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\u2026 [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.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It\u2019s 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. \u201cBoth my parents are quite into football,\u201d Dion, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":931586,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20966],"tags":[9648,27192],"class_list":["post-931585","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fifa-news","tag-fifa","tag-fifa-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/91varzeshi.ir\/portal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/931585","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/91varzeshi.ir\/portal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/91varzeshi.ir\/portal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/91varzeshi.ir\/portal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/91varzeshi.ir\/portal\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=931585"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/91varzeshi.ir\/portal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/931585\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/91varzeshi.ir\/portal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/931586"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/91varzeshi.ir\/portal\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=931585"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/91varzeshi.ir\/portal\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=931585"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/91varzeshi.ir\/portal\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=931585"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}