South Africa players will be paying their own way to the Bhubaneswar Junior World Cup (JWC) while the Malaysian lads will be fully sponsored right up to their socks.
That makes South Africa the most dangerous and hungry team in Group A, and Malaysia as well as Chile and Belgium had better keep this fact in mind.
The Junior World Cup is less than 30 days away, and it looks like the South Africans have managed to raise the R45,000 (RM15,000) per player as the final 18 was named a few days back.
Sihle Ntuli, the South African men's Junior head coach, had written on social media about the amount that each player needs to find in order to wear the nation's jersey in India.
"We will be leaving for India on Nov 18, unfortunately each member of the squad is expected to pay around R45,000 to travel to India and represent the South African men's Under-21 team at the prestigeous Junior world Cup.
"While representing our country is a great honour and privilege, it is tough to find the necessary funds to get our team there. We would also like to reach out to anybody who would be willing to donate any amount of money to help fund the team and get them to India. The bank details are as follows..." wrote Ntuli.
The 18 selected juniors had a great warm-up with their seniors, leading up to the 2020 Olympics, and narrowly lost 4-3.
At the Tokyo Olympics, South Africa scalped Germany 4-3 for a famous victory even though they did not perform well in other matches, and ended 10th out of 12 teams with one win, one draw and three defeats.
Malaysia team manager I. Vikneswaran said: "I have the experience of handling South African players when I was coaching while studying at the Rand Afrikaans Universteit in Johannesburg.
"They are a very determined set of players, and even though money is always a problem for them to play overseas or compete in the Olympics and other major tournaments, somehow, they always manage to crowd-fund and raise just enough.
"For the India JWC, each player will have to raise at least RM15,000 and this will make them much more dangerous and determined to prove a point.
"We are preparing our players not only physically, but also mentally, to face each team in Group A and the self-funded South Africans need a different game approach."
The Malaysian Hockey Confederation's main sponsors are Tenaga Nasional as well as the National Sports Council who made it possible for 21 junior players to go on an all-paid eight-match tour of Britain recently.
The South Africans do not have such luxury, and this self-funded team need to be beaten at all cost for coach Wallace Tan's team to be among the top-two in Group A and advance to the next stage in Bhubaneswar.