Malaysian National Team deliberately save the strength of Guam’s opponent in order to defeat Indonesia in the final match of Group B 2023 Asian U-17 Cup Qualification.
Malaysia coach Osmera bin Omaro admitted that he deliberately rotated players against Guam which ended in a 1-1 draw. As a result, the young Malayan Tiger troops successfully conquered Indonesia 5-1.
“There are two parts to this, the AFF U-16 Cup has nothing to do with here [Kualifikasi Piala Asia U-17]. Here we deliberately don’t show our strength against Guam, even though we don’t want to expect a draw,” said Osmera after the match.
“Here we are actually similar to the AFF U-16 Cup, we are very consistent. However, the ball is round and indeed sometimes we don’t always get a good final result,” continued Osmera.
Malaysia itself failed to qualify for the semifinals of the 2022 AFF U-16 Cup because they lost to compete with Myanmar in the group stage. Meanwhile, Indonesia, which acted as the host, was impressive and successful.
Osmera considered the poor results in the U-16 AFF Cup to be an evaluation event to appear more convincing in the 2023 U-17 Asian Cup Qualifiers.
“They are still teenagers, in the AFF U-16 Cup we started to prepare the squad for the next tournament,” said Osmera.
This result makes Malaysia qualify automatically for the U-17 Asian Cup finals next year with the status of Group B winners with a collection of 10 points.
While Indonesia finished as runner up with nine points. The negative results against Malaysia made Indonesia also unable to compete in the race for tickets via the best runner-up route.
Indonesia lost on goal difference to six other teams, including Thailand and Laos, in the best runner-up standings for the 2023 U-17 Asian Cup.
[Gambas:Video CNN]
(brother/june)
