ASEAN Cup Diary: Day 8
More actions coming from Group B as teams are out to secure a place in the semi-final before the final matchday!
With group A have played their second-to-last matchday and have almost determined who will be going through to the semi-final, it was now group B’s turn with Vietnam aimed for a win against the Philippines to be the second team in the semi-final. Meanwhile, Myanmar and Laos were out to find their first win of the tournament and to keep their hope of getting into the semi-final alive. Without further ado, let’s get into it!
Myanmar 3-2 Laos
Once again, I cannot even pretend to know a lot about the Myanmar and Laos national teams. So, I will continue not to judge whether their lineups were good or not, or even the same as the last few matches. However, it is worth noting that Laos also brought a relatively young team to this tournament with most of the team being under 23, and their captain is only 20 years old at the time of the tournament.
Nothing out of the ordinary with Myanmar’s build-up play. A box midfield with two central midfielders dropped slightly deep for both full-backs to stay higher. One of the striker, usually (#11) Maung Maung Lwin, would also roam from his position and join in with the build-up play. This gave the host an advantage down the central area, but, as Laos highlighted in the early minutes of the match, they did not have enough players to defend out wide. This made their rest defence a lot more vulnerable to counter-attacks, which Laos had two inside the first 5 minutes but could not capitalise to score the opening goal.
Meanwhile, there did not seem to be many changes from how Laos approached the match. Still happy to sit back in a 5-4-1 mid-block and forced the opposition to go wide, then would create counter-attacks if they regained possession. They were far more dangerous than Myanmar during the early minutes though as their attackers were in positions to score on quite a few occasions. They just needed better control of the ball or a bit more composure to actually take a shot. It was frustrating to watch in the first 20 minutes because Laos should have gone up by at least two goals. They got the ball into very good goal-scoring positions, yet they just took too long to take a shot and allowed Myanmar to get back and defend.
The host seemed to have found something with their attacks as they tried to attack down both flanks and aimed their crosses at the far post, where a couple of their attackers would make late runs into those channels. They came close twice and eventually got the opening goal via central midfielder (#7) Lwin Moe Aung. Laos must have been really frustrated at that point. That goal also swung the momentum towards Myanmar as well with the host creating more chances as time went on.
It was the same story during the early minutes of the second half. Myanmar continued to dominate the ball and got into dangerous positions to score. But similar to Laos, they just could not control the ball well enough to put it into the back of the net. However, they seemed to have taken a more conservative approach now that their rest defence looked set properly and did not leave much space for the Laos to exploit. Also, the rough challenges have also come out as more fouls were being racked up by Myanmar.
Interestingly, the way the host chose to play through Laos’ defensive block was using wing rotations to get more players out wide and also dragged some of Laos’ defenders out of their positions. Using quick combinations and one-touch passes, they played through the overload, looked to attack the channels, and got the ball to the byline, which they successfully did on a few occasions.
At last, Laos got the equaliser that they had been looking for and it started with a decent long ball over the top of Myanmar’s pressing lanes, allowing their attackers to go 4v3 against the host’s defence. The quality of defending was atrocious as players ran into each other and missed the ball, while the keeper mishandled the ball and pushed it out for (#9) Kydavone Souvanny to score an easy goal. It did not take long for Laos to go ahead either, only 3 minutes separated the two goals. A good sequence of play allowed Laos to play through a fairly harmless Myanmar’s press, which their attackers found themselves in a 3v3 situation. A through ball into the channel and, suddenly, (#14) Chony Waenpaseuth was through on goal, and the away side did not waste the chance to take the lead.
Okay, we were on for a late, dramatic finish now! From a corner that Laos did not defend that well, one of Myanmar’s players got first contact and swung a short ball back in, which (#9) Win Naing Tun was able to get to it and head it home. 2-2, and it seemed like Myanmar was not stopping either. Laos also started to push forward and left more space for the home side to exploit, which led to them creating more and more chances as they headed into stoppage time. And their efforts paid off, a quick counter where Laos defenders got a bit complacent with their marking, which allowed Naing Tun to get to the end of the cross and scored the winning goal.
Summary
It was a tale of two ends. The match was interesting right off the bat with Laos getting the momentum and got into dangerous positions to score, yet they did not have the composure to actually finish those chances, which would have swung the match towards them. That allowed Myanmar to slowly get back into the match, controlled it, got the opening goal, and maintained that momentum throughout. It got to the last 20 minutes of the second half where Laos swung the momentum back their way and scored two goals to put them second on the group table for a short period.
In the end, Myanmar regained the lead through two late goals and put themselves in a position to compete for the second place as they entered the last matchday. For Laos, this match was their last of the tournament as they received a bye for the last matchday. They should hold their heads high, however, as they have shown decent progress under coach Ha Hyeok-jun. The thing that was missing for them was composure and precision in front of goal in order to finish off the counter-attacking chances that they created.
Philippines 1-1 Vietnam
With a second 1-1 draw in the bag (foreshadowing…), the Philippines returned home to welcome a Vietnam team who was out to lock in that semi-final spot against Group A’s second-placed team. They continued to field their strongest teams with only two changes made where centre-back (#2) Adrian Ugelvik and left winger (#24) Javier Mariona started. Meanwhile, Vietnam continued to rotate their team with players like centre-back (#6) Nguyễn Thanh Bình, midfielders (#8) Châu Ngọc Quang and (#26) Khuất Văn Khang, and striker (#18) Đinh Thanh Bình started from the beginning.
Started with a 4-1-2-3, it was interesting to see how the Philippines’ set up matched up with Vietnam’s mid press. With the central players being matched one-to-one, the host looked to exploit the wide spaces and half-spaces presented when Vietnam shifted their defensive block onto one side of the pitch. With the full-backs and wingers staying wide, they were able to create short combinations to progress the ball into the final third via the wingers being able to go 1v1 with Vietnam’s wing-backs or passes in behind Vietnam’s backline.
Defensively, the host did not look to win the ball back right away but was rather happy to just sit back and ready for the mid press. Once settled into their 4-3-3 defensive shape, they looked to force Vietnam out wide by having the front three blocking possible passing lanes through the middle and force the centre-backs to either play the ball wide or play a long ball over the top, which they were able to deal with easily due to the height difference. When the ball was played out wide, the host tried to overload that side of the pitch, which would allow them to regain the ball due to numerical superiority or force a back pass to Vietnam’s centre-backs.
The away side seemed to react to the press well by having two central midfielders (#25) Doãn Ngọc Tân and (#19) Nguyễn Quang Hải sitting just behind the Philippines’ front three to provide passing options, while the remaining central midfielder Ngọc Quang pushed forward along with the wing-backs to create numerical superiority up front. It allowed Vietnam to play more long passes over the top with the aim of encouraging attackers to run into the channels. It worked, to some extent, but the Philippines defenders still had control of the situations well enough to not concede a goal.
For the majority of the first half, it was more just two teams trying to create proper attacking situations and put themselves in good situations to score. But both teams’ defence stood strong and played slightly well as they managed to neutralise passes that come into the final third. Vietnam had a bit more luck with creating chances, but keeper (#1) Patrick Deyto denied them on a couple of occasions. Overall, a cagey first half.
Lots of challenges being thrown left and right as the contest got feistier into the second half. Could have been an attempt by Vietnam to disrupt the Philippines’ possession play, which did work so far as the host was not able to get the ball into the final third. They had to result in long passes towards (#10) Bjørn Martin Kristensen but he was left alone to fight for the ball against two or three Vietnamese centre-backs, which he would have lost anyway.
One of the potential reasons why the Philippines looked more ineffective with their possession play in the second half was Vietnam’s switch from a 5-3-2 to a 5-4-1 defensive shape. The away side looked to have more numbers out wide and switching to a 5-4-1 helped a lot because they were able to have three or four players defending the flank and the half-space at the same time. Their midfield line dropping deeper also closed down potential spaces that the Philippines could have used to play through the central area. With those two changes, along with the lone striker was constantly isolated up top, the Philippines was left with little to no space to play the style that they wanted.
One thing that the Philippines was doing well, though, was being able to regroup in time and defend their box. Even though they lost the ball inside the middle third, the players got back quickly and swarmed the box, which worked to prevent long shots coming from Vietnam and put more work on their keeper Deyto.
While playing through the defensive shape and going wide did not work, playing over still proved to be effective as the host found the opening goal. A long pass from centre-back (#12) Amani Aguinaldo found winger (#13) Alex Monis, who was making a run in behind Vietnam’s backline. Monis was able to beat left wing-back Văn Khang in the air and brought the ball down for a low cross into the path of substitute striker (#9) Jarvey Gayoso, who calmly put the ball in the back of the net.
With that goal, the Philippines just dropped back and started to defend a lot more. To the point where they were just happy to sit back and allowed Vietnam to have the ball inside of the middle third and rather looked to prevent passes going through the defensive block. So far, they have managed to shut out Vietnam and prevented dangerous chances being taken from inside their defensive third.
Vietnam have started to push forward more and more, which also led to more corners conceded. So far, the defence have dealt with them well and cleared the ball from danger, but with 8 minutes of stoppage time, that was a long time that the host had to withstand pressure. And that pressure eventually turned into a goal for Vietnam, which came from, surprise surprise, a corner kick. Poor marking as most of the Philippines players got pulled forward to the near post, leaving only (#6) Sandro Reyes and (#17) Zico Bailey marking the far post. But they both missed the run from the edge of the area by Ngọc Tân and allowed him to score an easy header.
Summary
If you only count the goals, the clash between Vietnam and the Philippines did not live up to the expectation. But if you consider the tactical side of things, it was an interesting match, to say the least. Vietnam countered the possession play from the host well, but it took them until the second half to make those changes, which slowly got them back into the match. Meanwhile, this will be the third 1-1 draw for the Philippines, and if not for the previous two, this would have been a huge result for them. It will be hard for Vietnam to lose the top spot heading into the final matchday, but they are still not mathematically safe yet. The Philippines still has a chance, but they will have to overcome a strong Indonesia side while hoping Myanmar to lose in order to make it through. All in all, they do not control their destiny on the final day.
Group B have definitely kept things interesting up until the last day of the group stage. Myanmar has crawled back into the race for second place with a crucial win against Laos and generated mentality and confidence heading into a tough clash against Vietnam. On the other hand, the favourite of the group, Vietnam, are still not safe having only come away with a draw to the Philippines, even though they still have the highest chance to finish on top. With that in mind, expect some dramas on the last matchday as three teams will be in the running for the second spot into the semi-final, while Vietnam will have to fight to maintain their top spot. Until then, see you after the one-day break!