Kuwait 9-3 Indonesia

The 21-year old Kuwait SC’s youngster, notched his goals in the 10th, 13th, 24th and 33rd minute while Abdulrahman Alwadi also grabbed his hattrick scoring in the 6th, 26th and 35th minute while there were goal apiece from Hassan Fawaz and Shaker Almutairi.

“Honestly, I would have taken the results with both the hands as I was thinking of a very evenly balanced match,” Kuwait coach Fonseca Cilleros said. But the Spaniard also admitted that barring the result, the match was evenly balanced as Indonesia was the one who were rampant in the opening period and deservedly took the lead.

Danny Handoyo gave Indonesia an ideal lead in the 3rd minute but Kuwait started to find their rhythm back and hit back into the match in the sixth minute from Alwadi whose hattrick was eclipsed by Altaweel’s four-goal heroics.

“Everybody talks about him (Altaweel) but I believe in the team. May be he is our main goalscoring threat but there are other members in the team who are equally good,” Celleros said about Altaweel who had scored five goals in the West Zone qualifiers including the one in 3-2 final loss against Qatar.

Going behind 4-1, Indonesia – the first team to eliminate in the competition – hit back with Bayu Bambang’s goal in the 28th minute but Kuwait never allowed them to bounce back into the match.

“We need to work on our finishing in future as it let us down in this tournament,” said Indonesian coach Andri Irawan. “Against China, we lost with lesser margin but in terms of how we approached the game, today we were far better,” he said.

Irawan also praised Kuwait for punishing them in every possible chance. “They were clinical in finishing while we suffered in that area,” he stressed.

Kuwait go top of the table with four points from two matches and have a golden opportunity to finish top of Group D and potentially avoid Iran in the quarterfinal. They will take on China on Sunday while Indonesia will play for pride against Uzbekistan.