source: affsuzukicup.com
October 17, 2014 was a date to remember for Myanmar as their U-19 team made history by qualifying to the FIFA U-20 World Cup for the very first time. Just a mere day after, the senior team secured their participation in the 2014 AFF Championship following a 1-0 win over Cambodia in the Qualifying Round. The success of the U-19 team was hoped to be infectious towards the senior team in the subsequent competition.
Led by the famous Radojko Avramovic, Myanmar aimed for a better success in the competition. The fact that they had never went further than the Group Stage was Raddy’s primary task to overcome. Sadly, the Serbian magic which brought 3 South East Asian titles to Singapore, did not deliver for Myanmar. The “Group of Death” was still too advanced for Myanmar as they finished at the bottom of the group.
Their first match was against Malaysia at Jalan Besar Stadium. They showed dominance towards their opponent throughout the match, especially after Gary Robbat of Malaysia received a red card in the 34th minute. But none of the 16 attempts produced even a goal. The match, then, ended scoreless.
In the second match, Singapore awaited Myanmar for a nostalgic rendezvous for Avramovic. Unpleasantly defeated in their first match, Singapore went on rage and scored 3 goals in the first half. Myanmar showed struggle and returned 2 goals. Sadly, Khin Maung Lwin’s own goal made the task tougher for The White Angels. The 2-4 defeat hadn’t put Myanmar on their way home yet, but they were on a very delicate situation.
In order to qualify, Myanmar needed a very constrained scenario involving Singapore-Malaysia clash. But it fell through as they were beaten by the well-performed Thailand. Even though they made 22 attempts on goal, none of them ended inside Thailand’s net. A 0-2 loss wrapped up Myanmar’s campaign in the 2014 AFF Championship.
Among other teams who failed to qualify from the Group Stage, Myanmar have made more attempts on goal with 59 in total. They also recorded more shots on goal in the same category with 20 in total. However, Myanmar was no better than Laos in terms of goal-scoring as both teams scored only 2 goals each.
In their 3 matches, Myanmar completed 1,158 passes and became the only Group Stage contestant who surpassed the 1,000-pass mark. That record came with 81.5% pass accuracy, which is second-to-none in the competition.
Kyaw Ko Ko became the competition’s player with the most scoring attempts with 23 attempts in total. But from that many attempts, he only managed to score one goal in his 270 minutes involvement in the competition.
Here is the more detailed statistical facts on Myanmar in the 2014 AFF Championship (click on image to enlarge).
