Azkals begins Asian Cup qualifier quest tonight

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By ADRIAN STEWART CO
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Tuesday, March 28, 2017
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MANILA – The Philippine Azkals begins its campaign in the 2017 Asian Football Confederation (AFC) Asian Cup qualifier when it faces Nepal tonight at the Rizal Memorial Football Stadium.

This marks the first official action of the Thomas Dooley-mentored Azkals since their below par performance in the Asean Football Federation (AFF) Suzuki Cup late last year.

Dooley said he is optimistic of the Azkals chances especially after their friendly match with Southeast Asian rival Malaysia Harimau recently, which ended in a scoreless draw.

“I’m happy with the performance of the players; they played very well, it’s just that we couldn’t finish. If we can manage that, then we’ll be okay in the Nepal game,” Dooley said.

Azkals’ returning goal keeper Neil Etheridge also shared the same sentiment with Dooley saying that the national football team’s defense was tested by the much more aggressive Malaysia.

“The clean sheet (in the friendly against Malaysia) is obviously a foundation you can build on,” said Etheridge. “It’s definitely good to have a (warm-up) game like that moving forward.”

“We get back to training and hopefully, we can put up a better performance, score more goals and like I said, we kept a clean sheet (in the Malaysia game) and that’s the main thing for us,” he added.

The Azkals will be parading the same lineup as during the Harimau game except for Misagh Bahadoran, who is doubtful with a knee injury, and Ronald Muller, who has retired and has been replaced by Nicholas O’Donnell.

Aside from the Azkals and Nepal, other countries in the Group F of the qualifier are Yemen and Tajikistan. The AFC Asian Cup qualification round shall follow a home and away format with the top two teams advancing to the tournament proper./PN

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