Scott seeks help

Cambodia's national football coach, Scott O'Donell

On Monday morning the new Cambodian national football coach Scott O'Donell will gather together the head coaches from all ten of the Cambodia Premier League teams at the National Sports Center outside the capital to lay before them his vision of how the country's national team can improve under him and with their support. He views the buy-in from the CPL's coaches as an important necessity to ensure the release of players selected, notification of injuries, availability for squad training sessions, the whole gamut of situations where the national coach will need their co-operation. It's a sensible and necessary development as Scott begins the build-up to the next tournament, the SEA Games in Laos in December. He can be found sitting in the stands at each of the CPL games, running his expert eye over all of the available Cambodian talent in each of the ten CPL teams. And no doubt his conversations with the head coaches will identify the players he already has in mind, and elicit their suggestions of a few more. The naming of his backroom coaching team is imminent and work is also going on to secure friendly matches and practice games ahead of the SEA tournament at the end of the year.

The big kick-off

Your reporter and Cambodia national team coach, Prak Sovannara

This afternoon, the Cambodia Premier league season kicked-off with two games at the Olympic Stadium. The season's opener turned out to be a surprise 4-2 win for Kirivong Sok Sen Chey against the more fancied Khemara Keila, whilst Build Bright were leading Post Tel, 1-nil, in the second game with 2 minutes to go as I left early to avoid the thunderstorm just around the corner. Khemara looked set to win comfortably against Kirivong after national team striker Kouch Sokumpheak put them into the lead after just four minutes. He then missed a penalty and that came back to haunt his side as Kirivong looked a different outfit after the interval and came back strongly in the latter stages to win, with In Vichheka inflicting most of the damage. The Build Bright game was far less interesting as I collared the national team coach Prak Sovannara for an in-depth chat about Cambodia's showing in the AFC Challenge Cup in Bangladesh earlier this week. As always Sovannara was a great interviewee, giving me his views on the AFC competition, the players in his squad, his hopes for the rest of this year and the heads-up that this season he will be acting as chief coach to CPL team Preah Khan Reach, who begin their campaign tomorrow. More revelations in my article for Monday's Phnom Penh Post. I watched the games with PPP journo's Dan and Robin, who cover most of the CPL matches, and also met Chamroeun for the first time, another football nut who writes for French newspaper Cambodge Soir Hebdo.

The team's enter a soul-less Olympic Stadium for the first match of the season

The surprise package of the opening game of the CPL, Kirivong Sok Sen Chey, pose for the camera