AFF Cup 2018 Final: Malaysia National Team and the obsession named Cong Phuong
(Baonghean.vn) - No one else but the player from Do Luong is the player that the Malaysian team must pay the most attention to for the upcoming final match. Every time the two teams Malaysia and Vietnam meet, Cong Phuong always shows his talent for scoring goals against the team at Bukit Jalil Stadium.
Create a turning point moment
After beating the weakest team in the group, Laos, 3-0 away from home in the opening match, Vietnam returned to My Dinh to prepare for the turning point match with Malaysia. Obviously, Vietnam and Malaysia are the two strongest teams in the group, so whoever wins will have a good chance of advancing.
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| Cong Phuong's goal seemed to relieve the pressure on the home team, allowing them to play more freely. Photo: Internet |
In the 11th minute of the match, from an attack on the left wing, Trong Hoang took a shot after a pass from his teammate, unfortunately the ball did not go as expected. However, Cong Phuong was immediately present in time to cushion the ball into the away team's net to open the score of the match.
In the early stages of the match, both the home team and the Malaysian team played very cautiously. Vietnam respected their opponents so much that they gave them most of the possession time. We "huddled together" and deliberately probed for gaps and then launched sharp counter-attacks.
Cong Phuong's goal seemed to relieve the pressure on the home team, allowing them to play more freely. We had another goal from veteran striker Anh Duc in the final minutes of the match to make it 2-0.
The Haunting of the Malays
The striker from Nghe An has scored 5 goals for the Malaysian national team in the 4 times the two teams have faced each other. Thus, on average, Cong Phuong has scored more than 1 goal per match against the Bukit Jalil team.
Not to mention, Cong Phuong also indirectly created conditions for his teammates to score 5 more goals in those confrontations.
The above numbers confirm one thing, Malaysia will have to pay special attention to Cong Phuong if they do not want to pay the price in the upcoming two crucial matches.
This striker's "tricky" playing style is always a difficult challenge for every defense in Southeast Asia and Malaysia in particular.
Malaysian players are physically strong and play hard but are not good at predicting. Therefore, Phuong’s “concrete-breaking” dribbling will be a difficult problem for Tan Cheng Hoe and his team.
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| Cong Phuong scored a double against Malaysia in 2015. Photo: Internet |
More notably, Cong Phuong is especially lucky on the Malaysian team's field. In 2015, the HAGL striker scored a double against Malaysia, even bringing about 2 penalties that contributed greatly to the resounding 5-1 victory for U23 Vietnam.
In the U23 Asia qualifiers, Phuong both assisted and directly scored to help U23 Vietnam win 2-1 against the representative from Malaysia.
The scoring streak against Malaysia has not stopped. In early 2017, Cong Phuong continued to score in the match where the home team Vietnam beat Malaysia 3-0 at Thong Nhat Stadium.
Will Cong Phuong start in the final?
After the second leg of the semi-final at My Dinh Stadium, Mr. Park Hang-seo did not hesitate to share that the moment that impressed him most was Cong Phuong's goal.
With such quick and timely brilliance when being used like that, it is very likely that Cong Phuong will be given a chance by the Korean coach for the upcoming first leg of the final.
With a careful person like Mr. Park, he will most likely not ignore the above statistics to put the striker from My Son - Do Luong in the starting lineup in the upcoming away match.