The Philippines’ 2-0 win over Vietnam spells doom for Singapore’s progress in the Suzuki Cup

The reports:

Here are the reports for Singapore’s crucial last-minute win over Myanmar and the Philippines’ shock 2-0 victory over Vietnam.

Both are taken from the AFF Suzuki Cup 2010 official website.

My thoughts:

Looks like I got all my predictions in my previous post all wrong.

Unfortunately, while I am happy that Singapore won to keep their hopes in the AFF Suzuki Cup alive, I think the Lions will come to the end of the road in their third and final group match against hosts Vietnam.

Yes, the Philippines did shockingly beat Vietnam 2-0 to throw Group B wide open, but the result now means that Vietnam MUST beat Singapore on Wednesday to advance.

And I really don’t fancy our chances — not after looking at how Vietnam torn Myanmar apart 7-1, and how they played overall despite conceding two dubious-looking goals against the Philippines, and contrasting those performances to Singapore’s displays against the Philippines and Myanmar.

My Dinh Stadium will be packed to the  gills with 40,000 fanactical Vietnam fans on Wednesday – and I cannot fathom the Vietnam team letting their fans down a second time on home soil.

Singapore’s second-half performance against Myanmar offers a glimmer of hope but it means that Raddy Avramovic must really be bold and field the same side that took to the field after the break.

In other words, he  has to axe Noh Alam Shah and Ridhuan Muhammad, both of whom were really poor in the first half.

I don’t understand why Alam Shah is playing so badly. Yesterday, he seemed more interested in spoiling for a fight than playing. This is the fourth game in a row that he’s been poor.

(An aside: I think it is a sad statement about the state of the Lions that we had to be rescued from defeat by Myamnar by two naturalised players, one of whom is a 40-year-old, and the other who was on the bench, whereas two of our top players, who are supposedly stars in the Indonesian Super League, were just so disappointingly anonymous when it came to the crunch).

And let’s keep our fingers crossed that Daniel Bennett recovers from his knee injury in time for Wednesday’s game because the lumbering Precious Emuejeraye is only going to be left exposed time and again by the fleet-footed Vietnamese.

But at the end of the day, I still can’t see any light at the end of the tunnel for the Lions. Once again,  I hope to be proven wrong.

Yours in sport

Singapore Sports Fan