Preview: Terengganu v Selangor, Semi Final 1st Leg
The second semi-final takes place in Kuantan with Selangor still holding a 100% record so far, can Terengganu halt their quest for the title?
The second of the MPFL 2026 semi-finals gets under way tomorrow in Kuantan, and on the season's evidence so far it looks a considerably more one-sided affair than the first. Selangor arrive having won every one of their sixteen regular-season matches, and the two meetings between these sides this year offer little encouragement for Terengganu: a 7-0 win for Selangor back in Circuit 3, followed by an even heavier 11-3 victory in Circuit 7. Under this season's play-off rules, a side must win both legs of the tie outright to progress without further drama; for Terengganu, simply avoiding another heavy defeat in the first leg would already represent a kind of result.
What Terengganu do bring to this semi-final is genuine momentum. Their play-off victory over KL City, won 5-3 after Alif Mat Amin scored a first-half hat-trick inside eighteen minutes, was built on exactly the kind of direct, front-foot approach that has defined their season, and a side capable of putting five past a top-four team in a knockout tie is not one to be dismissed entirely, whatever the head-to-head record says. Alif Mat Amin's goalscoring form in particular has been one of the more consistent threads running through Terengganu's campaign, and the Kuantan crowd will need him at his best from the opening minute if the visitors are to avoid a repeat of their two regular-season meetings with Selangor.
Selangor's own attacking options have scarcely needed introducing at this stage of the season. Marlon and Evandro Borges have scored 48 goals between them, Syahir Iqbal has developed into arguably the most important homegrown player at any MPFL club this year, and Mohd Khairul, Malaysia's national team captain, remains capable of deciding matches from distance regardless of what else is happening around him. A squad with that much depth and variety in attack, against a Terengganu defence that has conceded 70 goals across the regular season, is the clearest reason to expect Selangor's unbeaten record to extend into the final itself.
The other semi-final offers an instructive contrast in how differently a first leg can go: Pahang Rangers took a 4-2 lead over JDT, also in Kuantan, a scoreline that leaves that tie still very much alive heading into the second leg. Whether Terengganu can produce anything similar against the division's dominant side this season is the question tomorrow's match exists to answer, though the scale of the gap between these two sides across their two previous meetings suggests it will take something close to Terengganu's best performance of the campaign to do it.
