Vietnam defeated Indonesia 2-1 to reach the semi-finals of the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) Women’s Futsal Championship 2018 (Source: thethao247.vn) Hanoi (VNA) -Vietnam defeated Indonesia 2-1 to reach the semi-finals of the Asian FootballConfederation (AFC) Women’s Futsal Championship 2018 on May 9.
The game was held at Bangkok Arena in Thailand.
Vietnam entered the game feeling comfortable. The two sides were evenly matchedin terms of talent, however, the Vietnamese side dominated the game from thereferee’s first whistle.
In the 13th minute, Vietnam had the opener as Vo Thi ThuyTrinh’s wonderful back heel opened up the Indonesian defence and allowedBien Thi Hang to set up Bui Thi Trang, who scooped the ball in for 1-0.
After the break, Indonesia fought back strongly to level the score.
After just five minutes in the second half, Febriana managed anequalizer for Indonesia.
With just over three minutes remaining, Nguyen Thi Hue made no mistake fromjust inside the penalty area to fix the score at 2-1 in favour of Vietnam.
After that, Indonesia pressed but failed to even the scores in the dyingminutes.
Earlier, Vietnam achieved three wins to top Group B and reached thequarter-finals. While Indonesia were the runners-up of Group A.
At the Southeast Asian Games last year, Vietnam bested Indonesia 2-1 to takethe silver medal, while Indonesia received bronze. Today, Vietnam willmeet arch rival Iran, who beat China 4-2 in the quarter-final, in thesemi-final. Thailand will face Japan in the other semi-final match.
“Before the game I studied our opponents very thoroughly and I knew that theirfirst set (of four players) were very strong so we tried to reduce their power.I congratulate my players because they played very bravely and they played withtactical discipline," said
Vietnamese coach Tran Quoc Tuan after the match on thewebsite the-afc.com.
While Indonesia coach, Kensuke Takahashi said it was a very tight game.
“We’re very sad about this result. I told the players about Vietnam’s style ofplay and their counter-attack. I think the players were not quite able to applythe instructions regarding the counter-attack. Overall, we drew against Thailand and we aimed for a further win butunfortunately we lost. I believe overall it has been a positive performance.This is our first AFC competition and I think it’s a good experience for theplayers," said Kensuke.-VNA
