HANOI (27 Nov 2014) – The Philippines will not be under any pressure going into their final Group A match tomorrow against hosts Vietnam. With six points in the bag from their first two games, the Philippines are just looking for a good game and win the group.
“What have we been doing the last two days? Celebrating of course after making the semi-finals,” said Philippines head coach Thomas Dooley. “We just had some small training where the idea is to rest the legs and allow the players to recover.
“Vietnam are very dangerous especially when they will be playing in front of more than 40,000 fans. For us, it does not matter who we play against in the semi-finals because if you want to be champion, then we will have to be able to play against anyone.”
Added Robert Gier: “we started a revolution in Philippines football four years ago, when we beat Vietnam here. We are under no pressure to win the game, so we should be looking to play well.”
For Vietnam coach Toshiya Miura, the match against the Philippines present another chance to develop the team further and play the game at a higher level, following what has been generally considered as not an optimum performance from the home team in their first two matches.
“I have in mind the 11 players in who will take to the field tomorrow but we will see,” added Miura. “We want to win the group of course as it is important that in whatever matches we play, we look to do only the best.
“We will just concentrate on winning.”
Captain Le Tan Tai said that Vietnam have not done well in their last two meetings against the Philippines where in 2010 in Hanoi, they fell to a 2-0 loss while in 2012, they battled to a 1-1 draw in Bangkok.
“It is a chance to rewrite history and we should minimize the mistakes,” he added.
