Wednesday, September 9, 2015

Making a point in Vietnam

Final score: PVF Academy (Vietnam) 2 PPCFC Academy 2 (U-18 ACT 2015).
A superb battling performance by the Crown Academy against last year's beaten finalists on their home turf in Vietnam, earned them a 2-2 draw with the visitors twice coming from behind. PVF scored first on 26 minutes with a fortunate header, which Ouk Sovann levelled 3 minutes after the break when his 30-yard free-kick from wide on the left deceived the goalkeeper and sneaked inside the far post. On 71 minutes, PVF went in front again with a rasping shot from outside the box, but substitute Umaru Samura came on and curled a 20-yard free-kick over the wall and into the PVF net for a 2nd equaliser on 81 minutes. A well-deserved and valuable ACT point for the Academy U-18s.
PPCFC line-up, back row, LtoR: Sovann, Soksela, Senteang, Jason, Titchhy, Sodavid (capt). Front row: Chanpolin, Suleiman, Noeut, Ponvuthy, Rozak.

PPCFC Academy technical director Tom Legg gave his thoughts after yesterday's 2-2 draw with PVF in Ho Chi Minh, which gave the PPCFC Academy their first away point of this year's U-18 Asia Champions Trophy. "Overall we are pleased with the result and performance from our young squad last night, we showed great desire and competitiveness from the first minute to the last. Its always a challenge playing away from home and considering the difficult conditions we faced leading up to the game, the players adapted very well. We had to make a few last minute changes to the game plan after the heavy rains and I was happy to see the players show their tactical flexibility to take on board and apply those changes.
Everyone that watched the game could see we carried much more of an attacking threat than PVF and we created a number of good goal-scoring opportunities, which is always pleasing when you are playing away from home.
Taking a step back and reviewing the last two performances from the players should go some way to show that we are not in this competition to simply make up the numbers, we are here to compete and achieve success.
We're still on track to reach our minimum points target for these two games which we feel will leave us in a strong position to challenge for qualification to the knock-out phase."
The ACT Group B points totals after 3 matches for each team: Kashima Antlers - 6 points, Frenz United B - 5 points, PVF - 2 points, PPCFC Academy - 2 points.

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