Wow, that was terrible wasn’t it? If you haven’t caught the preview yet, please go take a look at how I said that while CAHN is not easy opposition, this was the perfect time to face them. OK I guess not. 5-0 and a game where I don’t think we really tested their keeper much.
What went wrong? Or are we just not at the level required to compete against other ASEAN teams when we play away? Some thoughts this way.
Are We Too Defensive?
My short answer to this is “No”. Some may point at our away duck in terms of not just getting results, but also getting just goals, and say we have been too defensive. Besides the Kitchee game, we have failed to score in our last few away matches. 3-0 to Jeonbuk, 1-0 to Bangkok United, 3-0 to Borneo. It doesn’t make for pretty reading. And when you’re not scoring goals, then you’d hope the defence is solid.
I think the Jeonbuk game people can understand the magnitude of the challenge, but against Bangkok and Borneo, I think fans can be excused for expecting a little better. We fell to a late heartbreaking goal against Bangkok, and this time against CAHN, we conceded 1 in the first half to a very well-worked goal.
Some quick passing between the men in red led to what you see above. A great through pass into the box for their right wing-back to latch on to. Look at the top – Hafiz Nor is caught ball-watching and doesn’t realise the danger of his man running past his blind spot and eventually into position to score. In what was a superbly well-worked goal, this was perhaps the only error that was made – the only thing that made it more “preventable”.
You can see by the time that the cross comes in, Hafiz Nor is nowhere near his man. It’s not a pace issue, Hafiz Nor is rapid. He was just caught ball-watching – this is where his lack of defensive instincts perhaps shows. He is after all, a winger, not a wingback.
What I think is worth talking about is before this well-worked goal, CAHN hardly troubled us. We hardly troubled them as well besides some speculative attempts, including one from Lestienne in the opening minutes that curled just wide – but in an away game, we stayed solid and hard to break down, and I don’t think that’s the wrong way to play.
We do have a backline that is not blessed with pace, while our strength as a team lies in how we counter-attack. In an away game against superior opposition, I think we have to be smart and play to our strengths. Had we continued to keep up the solid display at the back, frustration will creep in from the home side and their fans, and that’s when they start to lose focus or over-commit on attack.
Also, you saw what CAHN did to us on the counter-attack when we lost the ball. They are a rapid team on transition as well, and if you’re gonna find yourself in 1v1 situations with them – be it striker vs centreback, or winger vs fullback, I guarantee you they beat us 8 out of 10 times. You saw what Quang Hai did to Bailey in the 48th minute – his twinkle toes bamboozling our defence before he nutmegged Bailey easily, and then laid it on a plate for Vitao, who didn’t impress with his finish. They are just a quality team, and against quality teams, you have to play smart.
It is a pity that we didn’t manage to hold on till half-time. Half-time 0-0 and the game turns out very different. But these are the margins in continental football. Local teams just don’t have the quality to hurt you in the same way.
Izwan Will Be Disappointed with Himself
I don’t particularly like singling out players for criticism – but I feel that he would be disappointed with his performance in this one. Just as we lauded him (and the whole Singapore team) for the battling 0-0 in the Saitama Stadium against Japan all those years back, by the same token he should be open to being criticised for his performance in Hanoi.
Football is a very funny game in that unless you watch full games, you never quite know whether a team DESERVES a result. 5-0 in this case, I genuinely feel it was undeserved because Izwan had such a poor game by his own lofty standards. On any other day, this would have been a 2-0 or a 3-0, a result that is much easier to take, and much less embarrassing. I’ll talk about some of the goals, and you can be your own judge of whether Izwan could have done better.
Let’s start with the 2nd goal – he’s beaten at the near post and that got him quite a bit of criticism. However, I think it’s not easy when a shot comes through a sea of bodies, and the quality on the strike – not just how hard and well-placed it is, but also the guile to disguise the shot means that the keeper may be half-expecting a shot towards the far post. Izwan does well to get down to the shot despite all this, but it just wasn’t enough. Not his fault, this one. Maybe Hafiz Nor and Lionel could have done a bit better to block the shot?
The 3rd, 4th, and 5th goal though – in my opinion there’s something to be said about Izwan for all these goals.
3rd Goal
In the 65th minute, there’s a corner kick, there’s a big shout of “KEEPER!” and Izwan comes out to deal with the arcing ball. Now, you’ll see a rather weak punch and I am no professional goalkeeper of course, so take my words with a pinch of salt here – but I think he gets caught in 2 minds or something. Maybe he wanted to catch it, but then at the last moment decided to punch it, and in the end, you get neither. To add on, Lennart’s jump in front of him might have covered his clear sight of the ball flying towards him too.
But no excuses – I was talking to Leon about this as well, and he said “no excuses, once you shout KEEPER, it is yours”. If you have to clear out your defence and bash their heads while doing it, do it. And if you look at the screenshot above, even if Lennart’s jump had distracted Izwan a little, you’d expect Izwan to do better. There’s noone inhibiting his run to the ball, and we’ve seen him claim the cross in much more difficult circumstances than this.
We know what happened next – it drops a few metres away, and Le Van Do just swivels on the spot and unleashes a right foot rocket with hardly any reaction time needed. It’s a really impressive finish, especially after Izwan does superbly well to steady himself and get ready for the shot after the initial spill. Watch it in detail – it is very impressive.
4th Goal
So some might not expect the criticism of Izwan here, given that by all accounts, this looks like a world-class shot on goal by their striker. But take a look at the positioning.
He is way too close to the line given how far out the shot is. Even if he can read the shot well and take a quick step to his right before leaping through the air – it is impossible to reach the ball if it’s aimed towards the corners, or the side netting. In fact, if you watch the replay, that’s exactly what happens. I think if you ask most keepers, they will say that there is a positional error here. He should not have been so deep.
Compare this with the position he took up for the 5th goal.
While this also led to a goal, it’s a goal because of a handling error, not a positional one.
Some basic goalkeeping principles here – when you step up away from the line, you cover the angle better and you make it harder for the shooter to find an empty part of the net to aim at. However of course, there is a limit to this – come out too far away from the line, and you open yourself up to getting chipped from distance.
So there’s a balance to be found, and my opinion is that while Leo Artur’s shot is a good one, it’s definitely not an unsaveable one for a keeper of Izwan’s standards. He just needed to be positioned a little better.
5th Goal
Not much to say about this one – it was just poor. Izwan gets down well to the shot but it slips through his hands. He will be sorely disappointed with that.
The defence also should have been better, but this is an example of how difficult it is to deal with CAHN if we just leave it to 1v1s – their attackers are better than our defenders.
Is Lennart Thy the Right Man for Us?
This will perhaps be the most controversial opinion of mine, given that there is not a lot of support for Lennart when we talk to some fans, or if we judge by comments online.
In this game, I think he was nowhere near his best. A few half-chances were let down by his touch, and there was a moment when he was put through (though he was offside), and instead of passing to an unmarked Lestienne in the box, he slashed a shot wildly wide. Maxime was clearly upset by that as well.
However, I still maintain an opinion I had ever since we signed him. I think Lennart is close to the perfect striker for us when it comes to continental competitions. His workrate and tenacity is second to none. It’s not always easy to get a foreign striker of big repute to come in and run around and impose himself, to be a pest on the pitch. I think Lenny does that. Richairo Zivkovic would not do any of this, I am sure.
While he may be potent offensively, on the continental stage, especially in away games, I’d much rather have someone like Lenny. In the first half, he was often our out-ball – as we looked to play the long pass to him. He did well half the time to hold up the ball, and give us a platform to build on.
One thing I’d say about Lenny is that he would be even more perfect if he was super-quick, because that would give us another option for him to just stay on the shoulder of the last defender, and allow us to play balls into the channels for him to chase into. That is a great quality for a lone forward. However, I remind myself to wake up because, if an Eredivisie striker is strong, can hold up the ball, can defend from the front, and is also super pacey, what the hell would he be doing in the SPL?
So I maintain – Lenny is the right striker for us, especially when we need to defend. Will time prove me right? Hopefully so!
Conclusion
A terrible result that leaves us on the brink of elimination in the Shopee Cup. I guess we give this competition priority because of the common owners of this competition and our club, but perhaps it is time to view the Shopee Cup as a game to give gametime to some of our fringe players.
It remains to be seen if the midweek exertions will take a toll on the players for this Sunday’s game against Tampines Rovers, which is a crucial one. Fingers crossed it doesn’t. Preview for tomorrow’s game will hopefully come out tomorrow morning!
As for the fans, I think it’s safe to say that there’s a lot more to gain from an away day adventure than just seeing your team win. I am proud of everyone who went up there to Hanoi, shouted and screamed their lungs out, and then had a kick-ass karaoke party after. All this while experiencing the hospitality and friendliness of the Vietnamese people – such experiences are priceless. We will forget the scoreline and the scorers after a couple of years, but the human connections forged will stay with us for far longer.
Written by Eddy Hirono
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