Myanmar stand in the way of Junior All Whites
The Junior All Whites have done their homework on Myanmar.
We are talking football as opposed to geography and history but a little bit of the last two never hurt.
Myanmar, formerly Burma, has a population of 53 million and sits in Southeast Asia, bordered by Bangladesh, India, China, Laos and Thailand.
They were surprise qualifiers out of Asia, beating the United Arab Emirates 1-0 in a playoff match after earlier finishing runner-up in their pool courtesy of a drawing 0-0 with Yemen, beating Thailand 3-0 and losing to Iran.
Myanmar are coached by German Gerd Zeise and have started the Fifa U-20 World Cup disappointingly with losses to the United States (2-1) and Ukraine (6-0).
They stand between New Zealand and a place in the last 16, a draw on Friday in Wellington not likely to be enough for the Junior All Whites to progress as a lucky loser.
Coach Darren Bazeley is only 42 and is a former pro at Watford, Wolves and Walsall. He was something of an attacking defender and will need a similar attacking mindset from his young men as they chase their first goal of the tournament and a ‘‘historic win’’ as he calls it.
Bazeley speaks well and he wants his relaxed looking squad to ‘‘be safe, be creative and get in goal scoring situations’’ against a Myanmar lineup that arrived in the country as out- siders and with a reputation of being defensively minded.
‘‘We’ve had chances to score and we haven’t been clinical enough in moment,’’ Bazeley said.
‘‘We’ve scored goals in internationals that we have played in over the last eight weeks.’’
Ukraine took 50 minutes to crack Myanmar and Bazeley believes there is a message in that for his team.
‘‘We do need to be patient. We don’t need to win the game in the first 10 minutes, though that would be nice.’’
Bazeley raised a few eyebrows by overlooking Wellington Phoenix player Alex Rufer for the 4-0 loss to the
that United States midweek but there was no word on Thursday whether the son of Shane Rufer would be reinstated. New Zealand need a win to stay in the tournament and Bazeley is the first to admit being dumped out at the group stage would be a tough pill to swallow.
‘‘I’ve said straight from the start, we want to win games and get out of our group and if we don’t do that then it will be down to me and I’ll be accountable for that.
‘‘First game [0-0 v Ukraine] I thought we put on a performance. We didn’t get the win but we put on a performance that made people quite proud.
‘‘The USA game, we didn’t. We didn’t get the win and we also didn’t put the performance on, so that was a disappointing evening for us. Tomorrow is a big opportunity for us.’’