ASEAN Football Championship: Singapore beat Myanmar 2-1 with injury-time goal

By Les Tan/Red Sports

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Hanoi, Sunday, December 5, 2010 — Singapore saved their ASEAN Football Championship campaign when Agu Casmir scored an injury time goal to ensure a 2-1 victory over Myanmar.

The win puts Singapore in prime position to qualify for the semi-finals while Myanmar are out of the running with their second consecutive defeat.

Yet it seemed Myanmar would take the spoils when they went ahead with an early 13th minute goal by Khin Maung as Singapore failed to test the Myanmar goalkeeper in the first 45 minutes.

It was a transformed Singapore in the second half though as head coach Raddy Avramovic threw on Khairul Amri and Agu Casmir in place of Muhammad Ridhuan and Noh Alam Shah.

Singapore attacked with purpose and were rewarded in the 61st minute when Aleksandar Duric scored a tap in from a cut back by Agu.

More chances fell the Lions way but they looked like they just had no finishing before Agu finally put the first victory in the win column when Duric knocked down a cross for him to finish with a volley.

“This tournament is great for spectators but it’s not good for coaches, it’s very difficult for coaches,” said Avramovic on the affsuzukicup.com website.

“We have made back these two points that we lost against the Philippines because we scored at a similar time as they did. I think we deserved to win the game but all credit to Myanmar, they played good football.”

“We were finding it hard to keep the ball in their half and if you don’t do that you can’t build up and that why I brought on Agu. I brought on Amri because he can break down the side.

“The other difference was that Myanmar were tired in the second half so there was more time and space for us to operate,” added Avramovic.

In another Group B game, the Philippines shocked home favourites Vietnam 2-0 which means Vietnam will now go all out to beat Singapore in their final group game to ensure semi-final qualification.

Singapore Lineup
Hassan Sunny (GK); Noh Rahman, Juma’at Jantan, Baihakki Khaizan, Precious Emuejeraye; Mustafic Fahrudin, Shahril Ishak, Md Ridhuan (Khairul Amri), Isa Halim (Shahdan Sulaiman); Aleksandar Duric, Noh Alam Shah (Agu Casmir)

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