Thailand coach Kiatisak Senamuang has warned his men to improve their finishing if they are to beat Vietnam in their opening match of 2018 World Cup qualifying round in Bangkok tomorrow.
Thailand striker Teerasil Dangda, centre, in action against North Korea.
Both Thailand and Vietnam played a warm-up match against North Korea ahead of tomorrow’s game at Rajamangala National Stadium.
The Thais lost 1-0 to North Korea at the same venue after Vietnam drew 1-1 with the Koreans in Hanoi.
Kiatisak said yesterday his men lost to North Korea because of one mistake.
“North Korea are a strong team and they gave us a lesson that at this level you make one mistake and you will be punished,’’ Kiatisak said.
“We moved too slow particularly in attack and we squandered several scoring chances. We have to improve our attack.”
Kiatisak said his team was at full strength with striker Teerasil Dangda, who got ill recently, playing the whole match against North Korea.
He said a match against the Southeast Asian rivals was always interesting.
“They are a young team which is a mixture of their U19, U23 and veteran players. They are good on the counter-attack,’’ Kiatisak said.
The other teams in Group F are Iraq, Taiwan and Indonesia.
After the Vietnam fixture, Thailand will visit Taiwan on June 16. Their remaining games are against Iraq (home) on Sept 8, Indonesia (away) on Oct 8, Vietnam (away) on Oct 13, Taiwan (home) on Nov 12, Iraq (away) on March 24, and Indonesia (home) on March 29.
The eight group winners and four best runners-up advance to Asia’s final qualifying round for the 2018 World Cup.
Thailand have never reached the World Cup finals.
Meanwhile, nine Vietnamese players have had the scope of their lifetime bans for match-fixing widened to include all soccer related activities at the confederation level, the Asian Football Confederation has said.
Vietnam’s federation (VFF) banned the players from Vissai Ninh Binh in December after a court jailed their former international Tran Manh for 30 months and dished out suspended sentences to eight other players found guilty of colluding with a bookmaker to throw a second tier regional AFC Cup game.
The AFC said on its official website yesterday that its disciplinary committee had now “extended the permanent ban to take effect at confederation level.
“This means the nine players are banned from all football activities in all AFC Member Associations.”
The scandal was one of many in recent years in a country notorious for illicit gambling and with one of the world’s worst track records for match-fixing with players easy targets for betting syndicates.