KUALA LUMPUR: Belgium are the emerging big kahuna in world hockey, and they are in Malaysia's way at the Junior World Cup (JWC) in Bhubaneswar, India, on Nov 24-Dec 5.
Belgium's seniors won the Tokyo Olympic gold while their juniors finished second to India at the 2016 JWC in Lucknow.
At the other end, Malaysia have not qualified for the Olympics since Sydney 2000. And at the 2016 JWC, Malaysia were not direct qualifiers but went in after the Pakistan team were denied visa.
Wallace Tan was the coach back then, and the ill-prepared Malaysian juniors ended 11th out of 16 teams.
And even the 11th spot came after a hard-fought battle with Austria, who rallied from 0-2 down to take the match into shootout at 2-2. Malaysia were lucky to win that decider 2-1.
And at the JWC in Bhubaneswar, Wallace's boys will have Belgium, Chile and South Africa for company in Group A.
"Belgium has produced many good hockey players over the last two decades and won the Tokyo Olympics as well as the World Cup (2018 in Bhubaneswar). I believe their juniors development programme is very strong and they will be Malaysia's toughest opponents in Group A.
"But then again, Pan American champions Chile and African champions South Africa are no pushovers. We need to take one match at a time in Bhubaneswar," said team manager I. Vikneswaran.
The Belgium juniors will be playing at the same venue, Kalinga Stadium in Bhubaneswaran, where their seniors won the world crown in 2018, and it will definitely be tough for Malaysia to beat them.
However, none of the junior Belgium players are from the team that won Olympic gold, and they struggled to qualify for the JWC, finishing only fifth at the EuroHockey Junior Championship. The six qualifiers were Germany followed by England, the Netherlands, Spain, Belgium and France.
But the minus point for Malaysia is that Wallace's team have been idle, away from international matches for the last two years. And after the JWC was postponed by a year, eight top players became overaged.