So starts Malaysia’s journey to qualify for the first time to the world’s most prestigious tournament. The draw also doubles up as qualification for the 2019 Asian Cup in UAE.
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The fight towards World Cup 2018 in Russia starts now, so says Dato’ Alex Soosay, the General Secretary of Asian Football Confederation, in his opening speech in the just concluded draw in Kuala Lumpur.
Malaysia was the first country picked out from the entire draw and thus puts us in Group A of the 8 qualifying groups. Timor Leste, Palestine, Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates (UAE) makes up the rest of the group. The campaign for Harimau Malaya starts with 2 consecutive home matches on the 11th June 2015 and 16th June 2015 against Timor Leste and Palestine respectively.

 Speaking to the media after the draw, national team coach, Dollah Salleh was slightly pleased with the favourable draw.
“It is tough but we are happy to have avoided Japan, South Korea and Australia. We acknowledged that UAE and Saudi would represent the tough fixtures for us while Palestine are not much different from us in terms of standards.”

 As for Dato’ Hamidin Mohd Amin, the General Secretary of Football Association of Malaysia (FAM), there’s a great desire within FAM to provide the best support to Dollah for this particular campaign.
“We will have a meeting tomorrow to discuss on the preparation and planning for the qualifying campaign. The first 2 matches will clash with the SEA Games and including the changes in the league schedule, are amongst the matters which we will discuss in the meeting. We want to give at least 10 days before each match for Dollah to prepare and train the team.”

 
As for the group favourites, coach Mahdi Ali of UAE is adamant that his team will be ready for whatever comes.

 “No matter who the opponents are, we still have to do our best to prepare for the matches. We played a friendly against Malaysia a few years back but we do not know their current strengths and weaknesses. We will go back after this draw and make our preparations.”

 Malaysia’s Record in World Cup Qualifiers
World Cup 2014 : Lost in second round to Singapore on 6-4 aggregate
World Cup 2010 : Lost in first round to Bahrain on 4-1 aggregate
World Cup 2006 : Finished last in Group 3 of the second round
World Cup 2002 : Finished 3rd in Group 3 of the first round. (Palestine finished 2nd )
World Cup 1998 : Finished 2nd in Group 1 of the first round. (Saudi Arabia finished 1st )
World Cup 1994 : Finished 3rd in Group E of the first round. (Saudi Arabia finished 1st )