Published on: Wednesday, January 19, 2005 |
Kota Kinabalu: Brazilian forward Eduardo Pinceli sent a 36th minute freekick home as Sabah scraped through with a 1-0 win over Indonesian outfit Persibom in the first match of a four-way friendly at the Likas Stadium last night (Tuesday).
The Sabah hopeful, who prefers to go by the name Edu, cemented his popularity among the local crowd by scoring the match winner in an otherwise lacklustre match and did himself a favour in the battle to confirm a place in the State team.
It however was an outing another Brazilian, Julio Cesar Ramires or Juninho, who is also hoping to impress the Sabah FA, would rather forget.
Despite showing initiative in getting the ball and having good pace, he failed to translate opportunity into goals on a few occasions in front of the goalmouth.
It was a lethargic game for most of the 90 minutes, aside from the rough play which resulted in numerous yellow cards and a red card flashed against Persibom's Jeffry Prasetyo for a hard tackle on diminutive midfielder Andrezinho Esposito.
The Rhinos nevertheless displayed marked improvement on their distribution and ball handling, shedding a light of optimism on their performance in the coming Malaysian Super League season which starts February.
Today Brunei and Malacca play the second match of the four-way friendly at 8.30pm, organised also in aid of the victims of the tsunami disaster affecting countries surrounding the Indian Ocean.
Sabah's next match will be played tomorrow (Thursday) against Premier One side Malacca at 4.30pm.
