Amidst the euphoria of a second straight Asean title, Singapore
coach Radojko Avramovic is already eyeing the bigger stage -
Asia.
Far from satisfied at being Southeast Asia's best, Avramovic said
that his players should take the result to spur them to bigger and
better things.
He said: We are never finished. We shall continue to improve on
the mistakes that we made during this tournament so that we can
improve for the future.
When asked if he was disappointed that the Lions would not be
competing in the AFC Asian Cup in July, Avramovic said: We tried,
but unfortunately we won't be there.
We missed a few important players during qualifying and it would
have been a good chance for us to test ourselves but it's just too
bad (that we did not qualify).
Aide: The next stage for us
Captain Aide Iskandar echoed his coach's sentiments.
Said the 32-year-old after lifting the Asean trophy for the third
time: This team is for the future. Even though most of the players
are still very young, they are maturing very fast.
We should use this win to motivate us to do well in bigger
competitions. I believe that this is the group that can finally get
Singapore into the final round of Asia's World Cup qualifying
campaign next year.
Aide was also full of praise for his side's mental resolve and said
that the events over the past three weeks have shown that Singapore
are indeed worthy champions.
We deserve it (the Asean Football Championship crown). We showed
what we were capable of against Malaysia after we fell behind and
we showed that we can overcome the odds.
Credit has to go to Raddy (coach Avramovic) and everyone in the
team. There has been many ups and downs but this is a very good
side and we have proved it.
Please tell the people back home (in Singapore) that the win is
for them and that we appreciate all their support.
We were expecting Thailand to throw everything they had at us
tonight.
It was a tough match and no one (from the Singapore camp) thought
it was going to be easy.
True to Aide's prediction, the hosts were "throwing everything"
including the proverbial kitchen sink from the word go and took a
deserved lead through Pipat Thonkaya in the 38th minute.
And it looked only a matter of time before their barrage of
attempts would lead to the second goal, which would have surely
killed the tie off in favour of the Thais.
Until Khairul Amri's stunning equaliser nine minutes from
time.
I told Amri that his goal made up for the one he should have
scored in the first leg. It was a very beautiful goal, Aide
said.
The draw helped Singapore to a 3-2 aggregate win against Thailand,
a result that sees the Lions defend their crown from 2004.
We are the champions!
"We are the champions" - the refrain from that song by the British
rock band Queen - will be on the lips of the Lions' faithful for
some time.
As Avramovic put it at the post match press conference: I don't
think there's too much else for me to say really than that. We are
the champions and now everyone wants to beat us.
This was a very good game, a worthy final played out between two
of the best teams in the competition.
Avramovic was also full of praise for the steely character
displayed by the Lions in the cavernous pit that was the
Suphachalasai Stadium.
We defended strongly in the first half as Thailand were trying to
push their players through to get the goal. Until they scored
(through Pipat Thonkaya in the 37th minute) we coped very well, he
continued.
We knew we had to score in the second half. They missed a few good
opportunities and then Amri scored a beautiful goal, one of the
best goals of the competition, to win it (the final) and that was
enough for us to keep the trophy.
The high stakes match was not without incident, and the Serbian was
livid that Shahril Ishak's 10th minute 'goal' did not stand,
calling it a '100 per cent goal'.
Meanwhile, Avramovic's counterpart Chanvit Phalajivin was still
bitter about 'that penalty' from the first leg on Wednesday.
Singapore won because of that penalty, he said following the
match.
If that game (in Singapore) had ended in a draw plus the result
tonight, we would have played extra time and things would have
different.
But football is football and that I have to accept. It was still a
very good game by two of the best teams in Southeast Asia.
As reality seemed to finally sink for the embattled coach in what
was apparently his last game in charge of the national team,
Chanvit admitted: We wanted to score tonight and we did but
unfortunately it (one goal) was not enough for us.
