PETALING JAYA, Sept 7 — Lebanon is expecting a stronger Harimau Malaya side in the 2024 Merdeka Tournament (Pestabola Merdeka) final tomorrow, compared to the previous encounters in the 2019 Asian Cup qualifiers.

The national football team suffered identical 1-2 defeats to The Cedars under the charge of Miodrag Radulovic in the third round of Group B qualifiers in Johor Bahru in June 2017 and in Beirut in March 2018.

The Montenegrin, who is back to coach world number 116th Lebanon last year, said there are big differences in the transformed Malaysian team, which is also powered by a few naturalized players now.

“Several players are very valuable (in each position), they have impressive quality and looked very well against the Philippines a few days earlier. Tomorrow will be very good for me and my players to gain a very good experience to play against a strong team.

“Malaysia has a lot of technical and quality players...If we’re organized, I don’t think they can really break us down and so, we should keep ourselves compact and our defense tight and I think we should be able to win,” he said.

Lebanon advanced to the final after beating defending champions Tajikistan 1-0 on Wednesday, while the 12-time champion Malaysia edged the Philippines 2-1.