When Malaysia at the hockey World Cup stops being an event

It is an uncomfortable question, but one the sport can no longer avoid.

Last month, Malaysians could watch the football World Cup on RTM and Unifi TV even though the national team was nowhere near the tournament.

It became a television event in its own right, with its global audience making the commercial case almost impossible to ignore.

The hockey World Cup, jointly-hosted by Belgium and the Netherlands from August 15 to 30, presents a different picture.

Malaysia will play all their Pool B matches in Belgium, yet RTM and Astro will not show them live. Fans who want to follow the national team will have to find the tournament elsewhere.

That does not prove broadcasters have lost faith in Malaysian hockey. Rights decisions depend on audiences, costs and commercial returns.

But it does raise a question.

If Malaysian hockey cannot turn a World Cup appearance into a compelling audience proposition, how does it convince sponsors that the sport remains commercially healthy?

Broadcasting is not merely about spectators. It is part of sports development.

Sports grow when children can watch players they admire and imagine themselves in that shirt.

A live World Cup also offers something less visible but just as important: coaches can study how elite teams set up, press and change tactics. Players can learn from the decisions and skills of the world’s best.

Umpires and technical officials can observe interpretations and tournament standards, while analysts and development staff can study how leading nations prepare and compete.

The target and the team

Malaysia open against Germany on Aug 15, followed by France on Aug 17 and Belgium on Aug 19.

The Malaysian Hockey Confederation has set a quarter-final target.

There is nothing wrong with dreaming about the quarter-finals. The problem begins when the dream becomes a substitute for measuring whether the team is actually capable of getting there.

Double Olympian and World Cupper Maninderjit Singh is not convinced.

He points out that the 2026 format differs from 2023. Only the top two teams in each pool advance directly to the quarter-finals, while the bottom two move into classification pools for ninth to 16th place.

The route to the last eight is therefore tougher than it was three years ago.

But Maninderjit’s larger concern has little to do with the format.

“The current system produces national-level players rather than international-calibre athletes,” he says.

He sees an ageing national team carrying too much of Malaysia’s international burden. Players such as Hafizudin Othman, Marhan Jalil, Fitri Saari and Faisal Saari have years of experience, but Maninderjit questions whether the same core can sustain the demands of a packed programme.

His question is blunt: What happens when your first-choice XI is also your only-choice XI?

“An ageing team is not automatically a problem. Experience can be invaluable but it becomes a problem when the players behind it are not ready to take over.”

Maninderjit believes that succession problem has been building since 2015.

He points to Malaysia’s recent junior record. The team finished 12th at the 2023 Junior World Cup in Kuala Lumpur and 13th at the 2025 tournament in Tamil Nadu. The junior side has also struggled to reach the podium in Asia.

So where are the players who were supposed to replace the current generation? Where is the pathway that should have prepared them?

And where is the international programme that would have exposed them to senior-level demands?

The questions become more pressing when the calendar is laid out.

World Cup. Asian Games. Asian Champions Trophy. Sultan Azlan Shah Cup. Then the 2027 Junior World Cup and the Olympic qualification race.

The World Cup is not an isolated tournament. It is one stop in a brutally congested cycle.

Maninderjit estimates that Malaysia’s senior players could face around 50 matches over six months. He fears injuries and burnout, particularly among the veterans, because the squad lacks sufficient international-quality depth.

Can this generation physically survive the journey to Los Angeles 2028?

The bigger test

Maninderjit’s concern extends beyond the senior team.

He argues that Malaysia’s hockey calendar is being managed on an ad-hoc basis rather than through the four-year Olympic cycle used by leading nations.

For juniors, he sees too little quality international competition and insufficient planning ahead of the 2027 Junior World Cup.

The problem, he says, is not a lack of tournaments but a lack of a coherent pathway linking them.

A programme can produce players good enough for domestic hockey without producing players capable of surviving international hockey.

Maninderjit believes Malaysia is doing too much of the former and not enough of the latter.

Malaysia have experienced the other side of the World Cup.

At the 2002 tournament in Kuala Lumpur, they came within one goal of the semi-finals, losing 3-2 to South Korea after needing only a draw. They finished eighth overall.

The best World Cup finish remains fourth in 1975. Malaysia then finished 15th in both 2018 and 2023.

Maninderjit is looking beyond the coming tournament.

Malaysia’s target at the Asian Games in September is gold, which would put them on the Olympic qualification path. But India, Pakistan, China, South Korea and Japan stand between Malaysia and that ambition. India are even considering separate squads for the World Cup and Asian Games.

The LA28 route will be no easier. The United States has one place as host, five will go to continental champions and the remaining six through the 2028 Olympic Qualifiers.

For Maninderjit, that makes a four-year plan essential. He wants U18, U21 and senior programmes developed together, with meaningful international competition and a domestic calendar built around the Olympic cycle.

Changing coaches will not solve that. Nor will another target.

The harder task is creating enough depth for Malaysia to compete without exhausting the players who have carried the team for years.

The World Cup will show how far Malaysian hockey has fallen; the absence of a successor generation will tell us how far it may still have to fall.

For now, the veterans will carry the shirt into the World Cup.

The bigger challenge is making sure there is someone ready to inherit it.

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