Amidst the euphoria of a second straight Asean title, Singapore coach Radojko Avramovic is already eyeing the bigger stage - Asia.
Far from satisfied at being Southeast Asia's best, Avramovic said that his players should take the result to spur them to bigger and better things.
He said: “We are never finished. We shall continue to improve on the mistakes that we made during this tournament so that we can improve for the future.”
When asked if he was disappointed that the Lions would not be competing in the AFC Asian Cup in July, Avramovic said: “We tried, but unfortunately we won't be there.
“We missed a few important players during qualifying and it would have been a good chance for us to test ourselves but it's just too bad (that we did not qualify).”
Aide: The next stage for us
Captain Aide Iskandar echoed his coach's sentiments.
Said the 32-year-old after lifting the Asean trophy for the third time: “This team is for the future. Even though most of the players are still very young, they are maturing very fast.
“We should use this win to motivate us to do well in bigger competitions. I believe that this is the group that can finally get Singapore into the final round of Asia's World Cup qualifying campaign next year.”
Aide was also full of praise for his side's mental resolve and said that the events over the past three weeks have shown that Singapore are indeed worthy champions.
“We deserve it (the Asean Football Championship crown). We showed what we were capable of against Malaysia after we fell behind and we showed that we can overcome the odds.
“Credit has to go to Raddy (coach Avramovic) and everyone in the team. There has been many ups and downs but this is a very good side and we have proved it.
“Please tell the people back home (in Singapore) that the win is for them and that we appreciate all their support.
“We were expecting Thailand to throw everything they had at us tonight.
“It was a tough match and no one (from the Singapore camp) thought it was going to be easy.”
True to Aide's prediction, the hosts were "throwing everything" including the proverbial kitchen sink from the word go and took a deserved lead through Pipat Thonkaya in the 38th minute.
And it looked only a matter of time before their barrage of attempts would lead to the second goal, which would have surely killed the tie off in favour of the Thais.
Until Khairul Amri's stunning equaliser nine minutes from time.
“I told Amri that his goal made up for the one he should have scored in the first leg. It was a very beautiful goal,” Aide said.
The draw helped Singapore to a 3-2 aggregate win against Thailand, a result that sees the Lions defend their crown from 2004.
We are the champions!
"We are the champions" - the refrain from that song by the British rock band Queen - will be on the lips of the Lions' faithful for some time.
As Avramovic put it at the post match press conference: “I don't think there's too much else for me to say really than that. We are the champions and now everyone wants to beat us.
“This was a very good game, a worthy final played out between two of the best teams in the competition.”
Avramovic was also full of praise for the steely character displayed by the Lions in the cavernous pit that was the Suphachalasai Stadium.
“We defended strongly in the first half as Thailand were trying to push their players through to get the goal. Until they scored (through Pipat Thonkaya in the 37th minute) we coped very well,” he continued.
“We knew we had to score in the second half. They missed a few good opportunities and then Amri scored a beautiful goal, one of the best goals of the competition, to win it (the final) and that was enough for us to keep the trophy.”
The high stakes match was not without incident, and the Serbian was livid that Shahril Ishak's 10th minute 'goal' did not stand, calling it a '100 per cent goal'.
Meanwhile, Avramovic's counterpart Chanvit Phalajivin was still bitter about 'that penalty' from the first leg on Wednesday.
“Singapore won because of that penalty,” he said following the match.
“If that game (in Singapore) had ended in a draw plus the result tonight, we would have played extra time and things would have different.
“But football is football and that I have to accept. It was still a very good game by two of the best teams in Southeast Asia.”
As reality seemed to finally sink for the embattled coach in what was apparently his last game in charge of the national team, Chanvit admitted: “We wanted to score tonight and we did but unfortunately it (one goal) was not enough for us.”
they wernt all that convincing....and if they could just score against teams like japan or iran, it would be a great achivement
its gd to be confident but dun be too confident leh..
e Asean cup this time round has lesser teams so the lvl of difficulty is not tat high..
a small step at a time is gd enuff..
maybe they shld concentrate on getting consecutive results against the Thais/Viet..
then aim for Asia..
