Tehran: Australian coach Alistair Edwards hailed his side for winning an important opening match against Thailand stressing that the win set up the tone for the tournament.
The Joeys scored two early goals through Taylor Tombides and Joshua Macdonald to seal the 2-0 comfortable victory over the Thai in the Group B action at Rah Ahan Stadium.
“It will set up the tone for the tournament as winning the first match is very important for these young players,” coach Edwards told www.the-afc.com.
“Credit goes to Thailand for bouncing back in the second half as they made us really difficult but we hopefully have a long tournament and after taking 2-0 lead we were more cautious however I would have liked to score a couple of more goals to completely finish off the match before half time,” he added.
Edwards’ counterpart Brazilian Leones Pereira Dos Santos admitted that their own fault cost the Thais the match.
“We made two mistakes and paid for it, the goals could have been avoided,” the Brazilian said. “But full credit to Australia for the way they approached the match, it took time for us to control the match and once we did it its already 2-0 for them,” he said.
The other problem Dos Santos highlighted was his team’s weakness in the bench. “I don’t have those players who go in and change the complexion of the match so we had larger chunk of the possessions but we failed to convert those,” he said.