Azkals fine-tune game in Nepal

MANILA, Philippines - Ranged against one-time champions North Korea, India and Tajikistan in this week’s AFC Challenge Cup in Kathmandu, Nepal, the Philippine Azkals see themselves as the underdogs – but one that bites back.

“We have a very tough group. Tajikistan, India and our first opponent, North Korea, all three past winners. So I think we’re the underdogs but we will give them a hard fight. That’s for sure and what comes out, we’ll have to see,” coach Michael Weiss told the GoalNepal.com website.

Drawn into a “Group of Death” in Group B, the Azkals face defending champion North Korea on Friday, 2008 titlist India on Sunday, and 2006 winner Tajikistan next Tuesday, hoping to make it to the Top 2 of the bracket to reach the semifinals.

Their target is to pick up five or six points from the elims, which should be good enough to propel them to the next stage. 

“We first have to see some highlights of the Tajikistan-North Korea match, that will give us some ideas, (and) I (will) get tapes from India. But mostly, we focus on our own system and we’ve refined that in the last couple of weeks and so we have a very good picture of how we want to play,” Weiss said.

The Azkals flew in last Friday ahead of everybody else, aiming to get used to the cool conditions of the Himalayas and get the players pooled together in the six days before the first game.

“It’s a little bit cold but we’ll get used to it,” Weiss said.

The German mentor said their 10-day training camp in the Middle East, highlighted by tune-ups with the Olympic teams of Uzbekistan and Australia and a Qatari club, plus the Fifa international friendly with ASEAN power Malaysia that ended in a 1-1 draw, give him hope for this campaign.

“We’re very positive, we have a super spirit. We have a very nice training camp in Dubai  and that match with Malaysia and coming here earlier to acclimatize, these are all good signs for us,” he said.

The Azkals try to stay focused on the job at hand in the midst of controversy back home involving two players, Angel Guirado and Lexton Moy, who had offended match commissioner Cristy Ramos during the pre-game inspection of the friendly with Malaysia.

“Preparation in Nepal for AFC Challenge Cup has been going really well so far. Shame there are people back home trying to bring football down,” James Younghusband said on Twitter yesterday.