Thailand beat the Maldives 3-0 in the AFC Asian Cup opener as coach Mano Polking knew the War Elephants’ chances of making it to the AFC Asian Cup finals rest on their performances against the minnows in Group C.
Midfielder Sarach Yooyen and striker Teerasil Dangda scored two goals 10 minutes before the break, and defender Pansa Hemviboon added another at 80th minute.
Thailand will meet Sri Lanka on Saturday.
The other team in the group is hosts Uzbekistan.
Thailand are at No.111 in Fifa world rankings, while Uzbekistan are No.83, the Maldives No.156 and Sri Lanka are way down in 205th place.
The six group winners and five best runners-up qualify for the 2023 finals.
Polking told a pre-match press conference on Tuesday that his plan was simply to make the most of the matches against the weaker sides in the group before taking on Uzbekistan in the War Elephants’ final group game.
“This will be our first game and it is an important match for the team in our bid to qualify for the Asian Cup finals,” said Polking.
“Our goal is clear and the players know that we want to claim victories in our first two matches against the Maldives and Sri Lanka to stake a claim for a place in the Asian Cup finals.
“We will face hosts Uzbekistan, the strongest team in this group, in our last game so we want to start off well by taking three points from the match against the Maldives.”
Polking added that he did not have a full squad available in Uzbekistan with some of his top players missing from the team.
“We have several injured players including playmaker Chanathip Songkrasin and defender Manuel Tom Bihr,” the Brazilian said.
“Moreover, Supachok Sarachart left the squad to play in Japan and we have four others who are playing for the national U23 team in the U23 Asian Cup here in Uzbekistan.
“We may not have all the best players in the team but the 23 players that we have here are all good players and have lots of experience. I am sure they can produce the desired results.
“While Uzbekistan are ranked higher than Thailand and are the strongest team in our group, we cannot underestimate the other two teams - the Maldives and Sri Lanka. It’s football and there are no easy matches.”
Polking took over the reins of the national team last year and led them to victory in the Suzuki Cup in January.
He will be keen to produce impressive results in Uzbekistan after failing to help Thailand wrest back the coveted SEA Games gold medal from Vietnam in Hanoi last month.
Thailand defender Theerathon Bunmathan, who also attended the press conference, said: “We have prepared well after some problems with the food here which gave stomach trouble to 13 members of the team.”
The Thais found the food supplied by event organisers “too oily” before team manager Nualphan Lamsam arranged for some “more nutritious” meals to be supplied to the team hotel.
Commenting on the match with the Maldives, Theerathon said: “I believe it will be an exciting game, but we will try our best to win it. Our target is to qualify for the Asian Cup finals.”