YANGON (14 Sept 2017) – Football is unpredictable and that’s precisely why it makes this game so great.
Who would have thought of such a scenario that took place last night in Group B of the AFF Under-18 Championship?
Three teams – Vietnam, Indonesia and Myanmar – were battling for the two available places into the semi finals of the tournament this year with Vietnam clearly in the driver seat after several fabulous performances in the earlier matches.
Indonesia were the first to go through that baptism of fire against unpredictable Brunei DS.
Brunei have shown that they are no longer a small team where the presence of a youth league has allowed their young players the chance to play football on a more consistent basis.
But perhaps, having to play in the afternoon heat was too much to expect from a team which had nothing to play for but pride.
Six goals in the first half and then another two as Brunei finally showed up for the game after breather gave Indonesia some comfort.
“There was a worry that we could not get the goals that we wanted. Now we will have a game (Vietnam-Myanmar) in the other tie,” said Indonesian head coach Indra Sjafri after the match. “Football is so unpredictable.”
At the start of the day, Vietnam were sitting pretty at the top of the standings, perched comfortably at having a perfect record of three wins from three matches.
Even their reporters just started to arrive into Yangon just hours before the start of Vietnam’ s clash against Myanmar. And they certainly could not have asked for a better beginning than to have a goal in with less than a minute after the start of the game when Nguyen Hong Son latched on to a short header to score.
But what a difference two halves of a game make. Myanmar’s revival as they continued to press forward saw Vietnam starting to make mistakes after mistakes as time trickled down.
And with Vietnam’s midfield beginning too crumble, two well taken goals in the set pieces through Myat Kuang Khant and Lwin Moe Aung gave Myanmar a fabulous unexpected victory to push the several thousand fans to their feet.
The win for Myanmar has allowed them to go through to the semi-finals based on head to head after they were tied with Vietnam on the same number of goal difference and goals scored.
“We were very lucky tonight,” said a gracious Zaw Zaw, the President of the Myanmar Football Federation (MFF) after the game. “The boys gave their all and that’s all we expect really.”
What the results from last night showed is not only the unpredictability of the game but also the quality of the matches within ASEAN have certainly rose.
Sure there were some negative results for the unprepared teams, but for the most part, the majority of teams here in Yangon are taking this tournament very seriously and that can only mean better things for the future of ASEAN football.
To have teams making the cut only on the final day of group matches and that too through head to head only portends to the competitive quality of the competition.
With just a day’s rest, the four teams will need all the recovery time they could possibly have as tomorrow will see Indonesia taking on Thailand while Malaysia will play hosts Myanmar.
SEMI-FINAL FIXTURES – 15 Sept 2017
– All matches at Thuwunna Stadium
1500: Indonesia vs Thailand
1800: Malaysia vs Myanmar
- As per regulation, in the event that hosts Myanmar qualify for the semi-finals, their match will be played at 1800hrs
