Saturday, October 6, 2012

Finding it hard

Head coach Hok Sochetra was left to explain the reasons for the 5-1 thumping by surprise package Timor Leste in his first competitive match in charge of the Cambodian national team. He came up with; "The players were finding it hard against the more physical side from Timor. Most of my players are under the age of 21-years-old so they struggled somewhat. With the several injuries to the senior players, we have to use a lot of the players from the Under-21. It is not a great situation to be in but that is what we are left with. And with young players, their level of concentration is unpredictable." Certainly the result made a mockery of the FIFA rankings for the five teams competing in this qualification stage of the AFF Suzuki Cup. Cambodia are ranked second in the group at 189, whilst Timor are wallowing at 206. The action on the pitch last night certainly didn't mirror that disparity in the ranking positions. Cambodia failed to get a shot on target until Keo Sokngorn's last-minute penalty conversion, whilst Timor found the back of the net with relative ease. In the later match played yesterday, the home nation, Myanmar, left it until a few minutes from the end to grab the single goal it required to put Brunei in their place, but again, the sovereign state that sits on the island of Borneo, and are ranked at 203, belied their pre-tournament status by very nearly holding the best ranked team, who sit at 184. The group action continues tomorrow, with Timor taking on their Burmese hosts in the early kick-off, whilst Cambodia get a quick chance to redeem themselves against their old foes from Laos (ranked at 193), with a 6.30pm Cambodian-time start. The last time the two teams met in Suzuki Cup action, they played out a goal-less draw in 2010 but more recently, Laos knocked Cambodia out of the World Cup with an 8-6 aggregate win over two legs. Coach Sochetra will be seeking a much improved performance from his Cambodian players, whilst the football fans back home will expect to see more passion and fight from their team, as well as more attacking intent, qualities that were sadly absent against the Timorese.
The Cambodian coach had this to say in the lead up to the Laos match. “The main thing now after our defeat against Timor Leste is that our players have to get more confidence and get back to playing again. The players were sad about the result when we talked after the game but now we must now put that behind us and try to prepare for our next game. The problem yesterday was that each of our players lost confidence so we have to forget everything now and move on. We have a good rivalry with Laos but I don’t know what to expect of them tomorrow. They have a new coach and a lot more experienced players compared to us. However in terms of physical size and skill, we are quite similar to them and we play football in a similar way so it may be quite a close game.” His opposite number, the Laos coach Kokichi Kimura, from Japan, had his own view. “Playing a first game in a tournament is difficult because you don’t really know what to expect and Cambodia have many good, young players so will not be an easy game. I thought that in terms of tactics and organisation, Cambodia were better than Timor Leste but Timor Leste have more skilful and powerful individuals who caused them problems. They had trouble with the size of the Timor Leste players but they can match up better against our team because In terms of our systems and players, we are quite similar although we may have a bit of an advantage because our players are quicker. We have confidence but it will be a tough tournament for us because we have to play four games in seven days and we will probably have to use all 20 of our players with so little time for rest in between games.”

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Excuse, excuse, excuse! Booth is right, we just don't have players. Boys, Sochetra sure makes Lee looks not as bad. We all were very hard on Lee. But, I don't remember a game where we lost 5-1 to any of the region lower tier teams under Lee. I said before the arrogant attitude shown by Mr. Hok, plus no scouting of the opposition, led to this embarrassment. Those players they got don't play in Brazil and Thailand if they aren't any good. Laos also has several players who play in Thailand. And I fear we may fall victim to them as well if we play the way we did against Timor.

Tav

Andy Brouwer said...

Factually, Hok Sochetra was incorrect when he said most of his players are U-21 years old. In the team that played against Timor, 5 players were under 21. The average age of the starting team was 22 years old, and the team contained 2 players who are 27 and one who is 26.
Though of course we have to take Cambodia players ages with a pinch of salt. I have a document with dates of birth from the 2009 season, produced by the FFC. In checking the birthdates against the official AFF Suzuki Cup website, there are 9 players in the squad who have miraculously become younger (managing to reverse the normal ageing process). Two of them by no less than 5 years, namely Touch Pancharong and Srey Udom. This has been a problem in Cambodian football for many years.

Anonymous said...

Thanks. I just read your latest blog about the age-related issue. It appears that age alteration doesn't happened only in football in Cambodia, it's apparently prevalent in almost every aspect of life in Cambodia. For example, government officials who hold lucrative positions (i.e. positions in which they can grow money on trees in the form of corruption, if you know what I mean) lower their age FROM TIME TO TIME so that they don't have to retire because they want to keep sucking Cambodia's blood for as long as they can. I was born and raised in rural Cambodia and have suffered though out my life from the complete lack of integrity in our society. It's so rampant that the most optimistic observer can sometimes feel pessimistic about our future as a country. Keep up the good work, Andy, of pointing out the obvious. Hopefully, enough young fans of Khmer football can see this is a problem and someday decide to do something about it. Although when that day will come only heaven knows.

Tav

Andy Brouwer said...

Tav, that day has come already. The PPCFC Academy boys will always give their real dates of birth. We refuse categorically to go down that path. We must start to change this, and PPCFC are the club who will do that. We will lead, we hope others will follow.

Anonymous said...

I commend the PPCFC for their leading role. And for that reason, I'm a fan even though I'm on the other side of the earth and can't go to games.

Thanks, and way to go!

Tav