In terms of a player: great. In terms of a coach: champion at breeding champions.
Butterworth-born Kuppan, who died yesterday, aged 84, at his son’s home here from multiple complications, epitomised a true Malaysian sportsman.
He saw the power of football as a force for good on many levels. He saw sports as a nation builder.
“The likes of him are rare,” said his national teammate and former Malaysia football coach, M Karathu. “His commitment to the game, courage, humility and patience are virtues to be revered.”
Kuppan commands wide respect from fellow Penangites as reflected in a mural by cartoonist Azmi Hussin at the City Stadium in George Town, featuring him and other state football icons.
His exploits as a footballer and coach are exactly what you would expect from someone who lit a spark in the game.
In 1957, as a student of Bukit Mertajam High School, he turned out for Penang Combined Schools football team in a curtain raiser for the Penang-Selangor Malaya Cup match at City Stadium, which was built a year earlier.
He saw some of his idols like M Govindarajoo, Edwin Dutton and Sexton Lourdes in action for Selangor and a year later, he was in the national team with them.
He was further spurred to be playing alongside legends like Ghani Minhat, Stanley Gabriel, Chan Tuck Choy, Robert Choe, Arthur Koh, Ng Boon Bee and Rahim Omar.
Kuppan lifted the Malaya Cup in his first season with Penang in 1958 and in that year was in the national team that won the Merdeka tournament.
He was a member of the first Malaysian team in 1964 that featured Singaporeans RW Skinner, Majid Ariff, Quah Kim Siak and Quah Kim Swee.
The former Penang Port Commission clerk represented the country for eight years until 1965 and featured in 10 seasons for Penang before injury forced him to retire in 1967.
Kuppan turned to coaching and helped make the national team a powerhouse from 1972-78, lifting Thailand King’s Cup trophy twice in 1975 and 1976 and the Merdeka Cup in 1976.
He coached the best players of the era like Mokhtar Dahari, Soh Chin Ann, Santokh Singh, R Arumugam, Shukor Salleh, Namat Abdullah, Isa Bakar and Ali Bakar.
As Penang coach for two years from 1972, he led the islanders to their fourth Malaysia Cup title in 1974. It remains the state’s last triumph in the competition.
There were occasions when his ambitions as coach for the national team went dramatically off-script, none more prominent than the controversial World Cup qualifier against Singapore in March 1977.
Malaysia had qualified for the 1972 Olympics, were the reigning Merdeka Tournament champions and it was time for the World Cup in Argentina. It was not to be.
One of the best Malaysia teams in history, with most of the players in their prime, lost by a penalty goal to Singapore, coached by Choo Seng Quee, that erudite scholar of football.
Singapore had triumphed over Malaysia for only the second time in 11 attempts over a decade. Malaysia blamed Japanese referee Toshio Asami for their downfall.
On the track of the National Stadium in the republic, an angry Malaysia team manager Bakar Daud fumed: “We were robbed of victory.” Kuppan declared: “(Asami) wrecked a national project”.
It is, and will remain, one of the most touching chapters in Kuppan’s career, just as his early years were stirring.
He was paid RM2 as training allowance with the state team and RM5 for national duty and got his boots from local cobblers such as Chip Bee on Chulia Street.
To go for state training from his house in Bukit Mertajam, he had to walk daily to the jetty to take a sampan across the Prai River to reach Butterworth, from where he took a ferry to the island and then by bus to City Stadium.
He often said he had no complaints although there was no time for enjoyment and that his focus was on hard work and sacrifices to bring glory to the nation and his family.
“If God creates me again and I become a youth again, I still want to be a footballer,” Kuppan once told a newspaper.