Match #24 (7 June 08): Undeserved Loss 1-3 to EastWest?

match report contributed by kh

Did Switzerland deserve to lose to Czech Republic in the opening match of Euro 2008? No, they did not. Similarly, Marine Sunday did not, by any far fetched imagination, deserve to be at the wrong end of the 3-1 score line on the same day of Euro 2008’s opening match.

We had a post-match technical analysis and the stars above narrowed down to 3 factors. First, we welcomed YC back after his lengthy period on the sideline due to an ankle injury. He rewarded our warm gesture with the miss of the match! After some fine work on the right flank by Teck Wah, he picked out YC in the box and squared a grounder across the box, only for YC to scoop the ball over the ball and with only the keeper at his mercy! Then again, Kanu did miss one and worse, Kanu was less than a yard from the open goal mouth! YC, being partially Swiss given his Credit Suisse credentials, perhaps provided the bad omen for Switzerland’s loss.

Second, we were betting on Gan to carry on his hat-trick form but he returned with a hat-trick of misses. Firstly, he latched onto a high through ball when East-West was yelling for offside. Gan attempted to head the ball over the onrushing keeper but the ball trickled just wide off the left upright. Then it was the right post next. Gan weaved through the defence, muscled his way past a defender and shrugged off his challenge. His side-footer beat the keeper but the ball sailed past the right upright, just agonizingly a couple of inches wide! His final miss came in the 2nd half when he took a snap shot in the box that deflected off a defender and came off the post again. Talk about rotten luck! His fortune couldn’t be more contrasting compared to last match!

Third, simply put, it was Kian Hwa. He seems to be the curse of the team. Whenever he turns up, Marine Sunday lose.

Our technical guru, Hock Leong, summed up simply – You don’t convert the chances, you can’t win the match. So simple, yet so effective. So, let’s count the number of chances that went begging. Besides Gan’s and YC’s misses, Mark hit the horizontal when he was picked out by KH. Teck Chye had 1 certain goal cleared on the line and 2 other half chances that he would have converted them with ease in his slimmer days. We could have slaughtered them but yet we let in 3 soft goals. We had the lion share of the possession in the first half and created those gilt-edged chances. Yet the half finished at 0-0.

Then, against the run of play in the 2nd half, their burly striker shrugged off the attention of Weng Kwan and unleashed a speculative long range missile from just after the half-line. The flight of the ball caught Seah by surprise and he could only watch helplessly as the ball sailed like an arrow over him into goal. 0-1. We equalized through a brilliant corner. Teck Wah picked out Mark outside the penalty box and the latter’s first-timer connected the ball with precision and power and it was East-West’s keeper’s turn to watch helplessly as the ball whizzed past him. 1-1
As we were pressing forward, we left gaps behind and were duly punished for that. A quick breakaway enabled their burly striker to surge forward with ease. Ng and Mark chased back gallantly and they appeared to win the ball back cleanly, only to be bemused by referee’s dubious call for an infringement just outside the box. From the resultant free kick, it was dispatched off with Beckham’s swerve and Seah dived in vain to his right. 1-2!

With nothing to lose, we poured forward and left more gaps behind and another counter-attack, and again their burly striker finished the job. He looked marginally offside to latch onto the through ball and despite Chung Wen’s close attention, he buried the ball at the far right post beyond the reach of Seah, who had come off the line to narrow the angle.

In between those 3 goals, we could only tabulate our misses as our consolation.