PATHUM THANI: Thailand head coach Alexandre Polking believes his team is capable of turning the tables on Malaysia in the second-leg of the 2022 ASEAN Football Federation (AFF) Cup semi-final match at the Thammasat Stadium here.
Despite expecting Malaysia to come up fiercer in tomorrow’s clash, Polking said his team has a clear target to reach the final and will make sure that becomes a reality.
He said the advantage of playing in front of own supporters will motivate his men to carry out the mission of defending the title that they won in the last edition.
“We believe that this is a new game, we are expecting a stronger Malaysian team than what they performed at their home, this is 180 minutes game, we played 90 minutes and they are leading 1-0 but we are playing at home now.
“We will have our fans on our side – I’m sure they will push us and I believe we can revert that one goal disadvantage we have now,” he said during a pre-match press conference here.
The 46-year-old coach of Brazilian-German parentage said: “We will perform the same we performed two days ago, if we can repeat that I believe that we are going to the final.”
However, he expressed hope for a good quality of refereeing in tomorrow’s match, especially from the aspect of giving extra time after claiming that the referee did not give an appropriate period during the semi-final first-leg at the National Stadium in Bukit Jalil last Saturday which saw them lose 0-1.
In fact, he personally felt that Malaysia’s second goal scored by Dominic Tan in the match should have been allowed.
“This is a big issue (referee quality) and I already talked with several people, with our manager to at least try in the meeting to mention to the referee that we expect a higher standard. I’m not crying around…we want to play football and all fans here to see that,” he said.
Meanwhile, Thailand captain Theerathon Bunmathan thanked the local fans after the match tickets were sold out and hoped to celebrate a positive result together at the end of the match.
“We are fully focused at the moment and we hope that we will celebrate together with the Thai fans tomorrow and to the final together,” the 32-year-old defender said.
The victory in Bukit Jalil on Saturday saw Malaysia extend their unbeaten record against Thailand to six matches after winning two and drawing three in their previous meetings since 2018. – Bernama
