VN beat Afghans, move closer to Olympics
Nguyen Phuc Hiep and Nguyen Vu Phong scored as Viet Nam rolled to a 2-0 win over Afghanistan at Thien Truong stadium yesterday, firing the hosts into…
Hiep and Phong sandwiched their goals around halftime in the one-sided game to put Viet Nam through to the next qualifier where they will meet Lebanon.
War-torn Afghanistan”s team, which arrived in Viet Nam Monday, showed heart in the loss in Nam Dinh.
The game was originally scheduled for February 7, but was postponed after Afghanistan failed to turn up because of flight problems.
The Afghans trained at home for two months but harsh weather hampered their drills.
The host team took charge of the game from the outset, directing six shots, including three headers, at goal but failed to score.
The hosts finally broke the deadlock with Hiep”s left-legged goal in the 34th minute.
The home squad continued their domination in the second half after Phong put the hosts further ahead with his goal just a minute after the break.
However, the hosts” control was weakened a bit when the Afghans pushed up field in search of goals.
The two coaches, Viet Nam”s Alfred Riedl and the visitors” Sung Jea Lee, both made positional changes to combat each other”s tactics.
The guests threatened Duc Cuong”s goal when striker Sarhad Rezakhan took a long-range shot, but Cuong was in the right place to push the ball over the bar.
Riedl was successful helping the home team, which included mostly fresh faces, protect their lead till the final whistle.
Riedl, 57, will travel to Austria later this week to undergo a long-awaited kidney transplant and will take around two months to recover.
VNS
