M'sia held to 1-1 draw by Nepal
Published on: Wednesday, May 24, 2017
Kota Kinabalu: The Nepal women's football team came from behind to snatch a 1-1 draw in the first international friendly played here with Malaysia at the Likas Stadium on Monday evening.In an entertaining match, local girl Dadree Rofinus opened the scoring for the national team in the 64th minute before Sabitra Bhandari equalised three minutes later courtesy of a blunder by second choice keeper Asma Junaidi.The Sandakan lass who only featured in the second half failed to make a clean catch of the ball and as a result put her off balance allowing Sabitra to shoot into an empty net.
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Earlier in the first half, first choice keeper Nur Azrin Mazlan justified her opening start as she made two superb saves to deny the visitors.Both teams created many chances in the match but it was Nepal who looked more likely to score first if it was not for the brilliance of Nur Azrin until the second half strike by Dadree.Malaysia head coach Asyraaf Fong Abdullah said after the match that he would try to rectify their weaknesses before the second match to be played at the UMS Stadium this afternoon (Wednesday) at 3.45pm."The match tonight is very good for our preparation against a very good team. They were fast and possessed very good ball control.
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"Compared to our first meeting last year, we have improved a lot but there are still a lot of mistakes from the players especially in front of goal."I will try to rectify the weaknesses for the match on Wednesday and hopefully we can grab the scoring chances better in the match."
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His counterpart Kumar Thapa agreed that Malaysia are a much improved side than the one they met last year."They are a better team this time. There are two players who are good that I didn't see in our last friendly and another reason for their good performance could also be that they are more motivated playing at home."We enjoyed the game. We had some chances with three in each half, unfortunately we failed to take it. We need to focus more on scoring from the chances created."We were lucky to be gifted a goal due to the keeper's mistake otherwise we would've been one goal down already. Stay up-to-date by following Daily Express’s Telegram channel.
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