Thu, 28 Oct, 2021
Yangon: Myanmar's Ayeyawady United moved into a three-way tie at the top of Group H after beating Vietnam's Navibank Saigon 2-0 in the AFC Cup on Tuesday.
Slovakian midfielder Miroslav Latiak opened the scoring six minutes before the break at the Youth Training Centre with his first goal of the campaign.
And following the 50th minute dismissal of Navibank's Togolese captain Vincent Bossou, second-half substitute Sithu Than struck in the first minute of stoppage time to hand Ayeyawady a second win of the campaign to join Navibank and Malaysia's Kelantan, who beat Indonesia's Arema 3-1, at the top of the table.
The trio are six points clear of winless Arema with just two games remaining, with Ayeyawady entertaining Arema in two weeks' time, while Kelantan travel to Vietnam to face Navibank.
Having seen his side go down 4-1 to Navibank in Ho Chi Minh City last week, Ayeyawady coach Jozef Herel was delighted with the turnaround by his side as they picked up their second victory in their maiden AFC Cup campaign.
"I didn't expect this result. This is a surprise for me," said the Slovakian.
"I'm very happy that my players played according to my instructions in training. One of our key defenders, John Karangwa, was suspended for this match and we had to change our line-up and playing style so it's very satisfying that we won 2-0."
The match kicked off at 3.30pm local time and Navibank coach Pham Cong Loc felt that the Myanmar afternoon heat may have got the better of his players.
"My players are not used to playing at such a time so they became easily tired in the heat," said Loc.
"But I felt that today, Ayeyawady's players played very well. If they can manage to win their next match here against Arema, I hope they will go on to the next round."