HONG KONG - Coach Kim Pan-gon hailed South China's performance as one of the best he has seen during his seven-month tenure after the Hong Kong side dismantled Home United 4-0 to reach the quarter-finals of the AFC Cup.
Two goals in two minutes in the first-half from Kwok Kin-pong and Li Haoqing provided the platform for the hosts to complete a comfortable victory at Hong Kong Stadium.
Caca made it three shortly after the break and Li then claimed his second of the game with an audacious penalty but in truth, only some superb last ditch defending from the Singaporeans prevented the defeat from being much heavier.
“It was one of our best performances,” enthused Kim.
“I have confidence in my players and I am proud of them, the performance was very good considering they hadn't played for three weeks. A lot of spectators came to watch and our players enjoyed the game.
“It is now our target to get into the final and we will do our best to achieve that.”
Along with Caca and midfielder Tales Schutz, Li was one of South China's most influential players and Kim admitted he was pleasantly surprised by his captain's display.
“Li's performance was great,” he added.
“In the league you don't get much time to play and I didn't expect such a good performance tonight, so I was very happy.”
Home United boss PN Sivaji admitted his side just could not live with the hosts and conceded they were comprehensively outclassed.
“It was a very good performance by South China, we couldn't cope with their aggression and their speed today,” he said.
“In most cases we were second best to the ball and we couldn't keep possession, especially in the final third. We needed to be much stronger, quicker and faster in the final third.”
However, Sivaji underlined Home did not help their own cause by conceding twice in such quick succession.
“The two first-half goals were our demise,” he added.
“We tried to come back in the second-half by making a couple of changes to the way we played but when you consider the third goal was a penalty early in the second-half, it was damage limitation after that.”
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment