League Cup - Round 2
Air Force Utd 1-1 Chonburi (AET)
(Chonburi won 5-4 on penalties)
Thupatemi Stadium
Wednesday 8th June, 2016
Match report
by Peter Reeves
Being drawn away to a lower league team in the Cup is never an easy option. You are expected to win, easily. I’m sure, as fans and players, we’ve all had the experience of losing to a ‘lesser’ team and of getting a result against a ‘higher’ team. It’s never going to be easy. And so we had first division Air Force, half way up there league at home against PL Chonburi. A potential banana skin.
The thing Therdsak had to do was to get his team ‘up for it’. To make sure they started strongly and imposed themselves, because you can be sure that Air Force will ‘fancy it’. It didn’t happen and after 10 minutes the observer might have been excused for asking which was the PL team. Air Force neat and tidy, knocking it around, getting to loose balls first, Chonburi just plain lazy and not looking up for the battle they faced. It took 12 minutes to muster any threat when a break from midfield, courtesy of poor Air Force play, was knocked wide only for a poor cross to produce nothing. After 20 minutes the only real threat had come from some comical Air Force defending and on 25 minutes a good save kept it at 0-0. You sensed if it carried on like this it wouldn’t stay that way for long. 28 minutes a clear chance for Air Force but a terrible volley from 4 metres and Chonburi breathed again.
The problem for me at this stage was that it didn’t seem to matter to the players or the coach. Were they just waiting for the goal they thought they had the right to score? If they were then on 35 minutes they got a wake-up call as an Air Force attacker found himself in the box with 4 defenders plus the goalkeeper round him. He turned this way and that and put the ball in. Four defenders. No meaningful challenge. A measure firstly of attitude and secondly of the team’s defensive capability. Or incapability. Maybe the wake-up call worked as on 40 minutes the Air Force defence twice cleared a ball off the line. Half time arrived. The ‘big boys’ were losing. It hadn’t been good for the Sharks, deservedly behind. Possession was ineffective and without any creative thought. Ball retention poor. Attitude sloppy. Outfought just about everywhere.
Therdsak? Nowhere to be seen. As the team walked off the camera panned round and caught his expression best summed up like this: at the beginning of the match he didn’t know what would happen. While it was happening he didn’t know what was happening and at half time he didn’t know what had happened.
The second half saw a couple of player changes but the real change seemed to come from Air Force. They had been playing a semblance of a 4-4-2 formation but suddenly changed to a 4-1-4-1. This had the effect of reducing the attacking threat they had posed in the first half and presented Chonburi with the chance to relax a bit. Of course it is hard to be certain about that because tactical formations and discipline of shape are not high on the agenda of most Thai teams, but that is what it looked like. Was the Air Force coach trying to hang on to his 1-0? Mistake if he was. The second half apart from a few forays by the hosts, belonged to Chonburi.
Chances were being created and missed. 3 by the on-coming Rodrigo alone, but the equalizer inevitably arrived courtesy of a decent free kick and a flicked header. An 87 minute scramble in the Air Force box almost found a winner but then it was over and an extra 30 minutes. Just the same with Chonburi now dominating a tiring Air Force but with no real creativity and certainly no real firepower up front to finish the ‘little’ team off. Air Force now limited to breakaways but they were still a threat, albeit not like they had been in the first half. And so to penalties. This was the most interesting part of the match from my view because a set of players who can’t hit a barn door at ten paces from free kicks and corners produced some decent penalties punctuated only by an Air Force player hitting the bar and knocking his team out.
So Chonburi through to the next round and the Air Force coach wishing he had pushed on in the early part of the second half to get a second and maybe kill the game. But Sharks fans can hardly be happy with the performance overall. It was a scrappy showing that lacked any sort of creativity or passion.
Unfortunately Chonburi look what they are really, a middle of the table team plodding along and going nowhere. Won’t go down, Won’t win the league or a cup, just mid table which given their history surely is not good enough.
The goalkeeper looks ok and of course Dos Santos and the two wingers are quick, but there is a lack of a creative, dominant force in midfield and a woefully inadequate strike force. I expected them to put on a bit of a performance tonight. Still a place in the next round is there’s so I suppose the fans will be largely happy at that. It could have been worse.
These games are never easy, ask Nakhon Ratchasima beaten 4-1 at Songkhia or Bangkok Glass beaten at Port. In total 6 PL teams crashed out. It’s never easy. But it makes it harder if you are not up for the fight and in the first half they certainly weren’t.
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