After-match

Coach David Booth addresses his players. Pic Masayori Ishikawa.

Phnom Penh Crown head coach David Booth was not a happy man after watching his team lose 3-1 to Kirivong on Sunday afternoon at Olympic Stadium. The dressing room was in stunned silence as the players trooped back in after the final whistle. These are the coach's immediate after-match comments: "We were very poor in the 1st half. We missed chances, I don't know how many times we hit the post and bar. I never thought we were going to score and I was surprised when it actually went in. It's hard to explain, it's just not what we have been doing, what we do, the way we train, the way we work. Why was that performance like that? I actually have no idea.
We improved a little bit in the 2nd half, but not a lot. Again, look at the chances we had in the 2nd half, maybe six or seven, not one went in, they either just missed the post or went straight at the goalie. While they had three chances and scored three goals. Out of more than ten chances, we scored one. Not good enough. There's no excuse for the way we played, we played badly today.
Tomorrow we'll get them back together and sort out why we played like this.We need to analyse, sit back and look at what happened, and make sure it doesn't happen again. It certainly doesn't augur well for the President's Cup. We needed a good performance to take into that., We didn't get it. We know that any performance like that next week and we'll be dead and buried. When you look at our team, they are all national players, ex-national players and foreign players - lots of experience - but it simply didn't work for us today.
With the experience we have in the team, they've got to see the danger before it happens. We told them all the correct things before the game but they just stood and watched them score the first goal. There is no excuse."