After the sacking of Henrik Rydstrom from Malmo left Matthew Mak Pak-hei \u201cfeeling guilty but needing to step up and grow as a person\u201d, the pioneering Hongkonger is reunited with the Swedish head coach and plotting to return Columbus Crew to the summit of Major League Soccer.<\/p>\n
Rydstrom was appointed as successor to Wilfried Nancy, who left American club Columbus for an ill-starred spell as Celtic manager, on New Year\u2019s Eve, three months after losing his job with Malmo.<\/p>\n
After his boss\u2019 exit, first-team analyst Mak was retained by the Swedish club for the rest of the 2025 season. \u201cWhen the coach is fired and you\u2019re still there, you feel bad,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m part of [choosing] the starting line-up, opposition analysis and game development; you look at yourself and think, \u2018maybe I didn\u2019t do something well enough; maybe I should be gone, too\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n
Still only 26, Mak said his closing months with Malmo, where he helped Rydstrom win two league titles and one domestic cup, were \u201cnot easy personally, but professional life had to go on\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen Henrik was there, I could always be under his umbrella and feel safe,\u201d Mak said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After the sacking of Henrik Rydstrom from Malmo left Matthew Mak Pak-hei \u201cfeeling guilty but needing to step…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":495757,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[82851,249781,64,63,113571,3928,6254,596,10340,15350,249784,249782,146227,249785,52824,249783,85,178332],"class_list":{"0":"post-495756","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-football","8":"tag-alex-ferguson","9":"tag-andre-gomes","10":"tag-au","11":"tag-australia","12":"tag-celtic","13":"tag-columbus","14":"tag-europa-league","15":"tag-football","16":"tag-hong-kong","17":"tag-major-league-soccer","18":"tag-malmo","19":"tag-matthew-mak-pak-hei","20":"tag-palm-beach","21":"tag-phil-neville","22":"tag-porto","23":"tag-real-madrid-graduate-school","24":"tag-sports","25":"tag-wilfried-nancy"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/495756","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=495756"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/495756\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/495757"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=495756"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=495756"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=495756"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}