And so it was another draw. We drew against Indonesia, the team that has beaten us 19/19 times in the past. That was a good result. Yeah, yeah. I'm actually quite sick of the "It was good considering we were playing the better team" attitude.
This was supposed to have been one of the best Azkals squads we have ever fielded, marred only by the absence of Stephan Schrock. If we say WE BELIEVE, then we need to get out of the mentality that it's a good result to simply 'not lose' against what are supposedly better teams.
The Malaysians, the Indonesians, they might have been better teams once. The Azkals and the fans need to start believing that those days are gone. We have come a long way in the past two years and always feeling like the underdog will not help us progress. The moment we start feeling like winners is when we will deserve to win.
In all fairness, the team still lacked coordination and passing was still poor but they dominated the first half. The Azkals were in no way outclassed. There were no dribbling exhibitions flaunted at our faces and possession was not one-sided. In fact, the Azkals had considerably a greater number of attempts at goal. Roland Muller who was manning the Azkals goal was hardly bothered.
I was glad to see Coach Weiss changing it up a bit more for the friendlies and using more players. The second half saw James and Phil Younghusband and Jerry Lucena coming in for Paul Mulders, Marwin Angeles and Dennis Wolf. Neil Etheridge also took over GK duties from Roland Muller. Later in the half, Misagh Baradoran was brought in for Angel Guirado. The changes shifted the tempo of the game entirely and soon, more scoring opportunities started opening up for both teams. Unfortunately, Indonesia got there first. Luckily, the Younghusbands came to the rescue.
In the end, another lapse in judgement by our defensive line allowed Indonesia to score and the Azkals had to fight back pretty hard to get the draw. We may have dominated the first half but the second was all about scrambling for survival.
I also feel quite bad for Etheridge who was quite pissed to not be starting the game while his friends were in town to watch him play. Everything was made worse by the fact that Muller was hardly challenged in the first half and Neil conceded two goals.
The game was also marred by a small fight that broke out between Chieffy and Irfan Bachdim where Manny Ott immediately came to the rescue and was quite promptly put in his place by the officials. Coach Weiss was fast enough and had the sense to push Misagh Bahadoran away before he can join the melee and save us from having more players sent off.
The stands were also relatively empty for this match which leads me to think that the interest in football is slowly waning. Despite the obvious exploitation of the Phil-Angel hoopla and Bahadoran's good looks, the teams needs to win to keep the fans. A draw is not enough. The future of Philippine football still hangs at a balance. There's still a lot of work to be done and I'm just hoping that the PFF and Dan Palami will be able to keep the team from steeping in a pot of controversy and slowly fade away into lack luster mediocrity.
We STILL believe.
*pics by Anton Shecker via goal.ph
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