KUALA LUMPUR, May 31 — The Football Association of Malaysia (FAM) today announced that the Tier 1 international match between Malaysia and Yemen scheduled for June 20 at Stadium Sultan Mizan Zainal Abidin in Kuala Nerus, Terengganu has been cancelled.

This follows the Yemen Football Association’s (YFA) announcement yesterday that they had to cancel the match as key players would be unavailable because they have to join their national Under-23 squad for a tournament in Iraq.

However, the Harimau Malaya squad under Kim Pan Gon will play Papua New Guinea, who have agreed to fill the slot vacated by Yemen on that day.

"The last-minute cancellation by YFA has forced FAM to get a suitable replacement team in a short time, with limited choices as most of the other teams have set their own matches on the Fifa calendar this time.

"After contacting several teams, FAM finally obtained the agreement of Papua New Guinea to be the replacement team,” said FAM secretary-general Noor Azman Rahman on FAM’s official Facebook account today.

In the Fifa match window from June 12 to 20, apart from the Papua New Guinea match, Pan Gon’s squad are also scheduled to play Solomon Islands at Stadium Sultan Mizan Zainal Abidin on June 14.

Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea are ranked 134th and 159th in the world respectively while Malaysia are 138th.

The two matches are a continuation of Malaysia’s preparation for the Asian Cup 2023 in Qatar in January next year after they scored two victories earlier, beating Turkmenistan 1-0 and Hong Kong 2-0 in Tier 1 matches in Johor last March.

Apart from this, Pan Gon will also guide the team to the World Cup 2026/Asian Cup 2027 qualifying rounds scheduled to begin in November. — Bernama