A prominent Malaysian football player who suffered severe burns in an acid attack was discharged on Saturday from a hospital where he underwent several surgeries, his club’s CEO said.
Selangor FC and Malaysia forward Faisal Halim suffered burns to his neck, shoulders, hands and chest in the attack at a shopping mall on the outskirts of the capital Kuala Lumpur on May 5.
Faisal’s case was the most notorious of separate crimes committed against four Malaysian top-flight football players this month, which are not believed to be linked but which have nonetheless shocked and angered the country.
Selangor FC chief executive Johan Kamal Hamidon told AFP that the player was discharged from hospital on Saturday afternoon.
“We will schedule a separate press session with Faisal Halim as soon as he is ready,” he said, without elaborating.
Shahril Mokhtar, chairman of Selangor FC’s technical committee, said on Wednesday that Faisal was recovering well after major skin graft surgery.
Shahril also said that the footballer could return to the field as early as August.
Faisal underwent a three-hour skin allograft surgery on Monday, which went “better than expected”, team doctor Muhammad Hazwan Khair said this week.
Nicknamed “Mickey”, the 26-year-old scored the equalizer against South Korea, voted the best goal of the 2023 Asian Cup.
Malaysia’s national football season was scheduled to begin on May 10 with a curtain raiser between Faisal’s Selangor and Super League champions Johor Darul Ta’zim (JDT).
Selangor withdrew, citing “a series of recent criminal incidents and threats”, but the league began the following day.
In early May, three days before the acid attack, another national player, Akhyar Rashid, was injured in a robbery outside his home in the eastern state of Terengganu.
In a third incident, two days after the attack on Faisal, former Malaysian captain Safiq Rahim escaped unharmed after being threatened with a hammer and his car’s windscreen being destroyed by two attackers.
International defender Khuzaimi Piee became the fourth Malaysian footballer this month to be the victim of crime, after police said on Thursday his home was burgled.
str/mba/sco
