Man of his word
Amirul bounces back with teammates to down Vietnam
TEAM skipper Amirul Arif Mahadhir kept his promise as he struck a brace to help the national five-a-side football (visually impaired) team to a 3-0 winin over Vietnam.
Amirul, who vowed to give an improved performance, was on target in the 21st and 29th minutes after Ahmad Fikri Omar had opened the scoring in the eighth minute during their second match of the Asean Para Games at the National Hockey Stadium in Bukit Jalil yesterday.
Defending champions Malay-sia, who lost their opening match 2-1 to Thailand on Monday, now face a must-win match against Laos today.
Amirul was disappointed that they failed to hit the five-goal target against Vietnam.
The Universiti Malaya sports management undergraduate admitted that they would now have to score more against Laos in their final round-robin match.
“I’m not satisfied with my performance, although we played a much better game against Vietnam. Our target was to score five goals today but it didn’t happen,” said the 24-year-old Amirul yesterday.
“We need to improve on our shooting. We had a lot of chances against Vietnam but couldn’t convert them.
“We need to continue the momentum against Laos.”
National coach Sunny Shalesh, however, was pleased to see their offensive game pay off against Vietnam.
“We wanted to get early goals as well as score at least five. We fielded three attackers to pressure the Vietnam defence.
“We saw the video of Vietnam’s earlier game and noticed that there were gaps between their two-man defence.
“We got our tactics spot-on for this game.”
Thailand checked into the final after beating Laos 4-1 in an earli- er match to chalk up their second win.
The top two teams in the fourteam round- robin competition will play in Friday’s final. The third and fourth- placed teams will play off for the bronze.