Just A Report: UiTM Vs. Negeri Sembilan
Credit: MFL
On this night, it was two strong contenders for the Super League promotion race leaving UiTM Stadium feeling regretful and aggrieved having played 90 minutes without any reward.
UiTM FC were left to wonder if they haven’t spectacularly collapsed in the run-up that lead to this and also lead to them regretting not taking three golden chances. On the other hand, Negeri Sembilan were left to rue their porous defence in the last 10+ minutes or so in their previous match that resulted in a 3-2 loss at home to fellow promotion rivals PDRM and was also perhaps the victim of questionable refereeing in this match.
Alas, the wild & dramatic 1-1 draw played out by these teams perfectly personified their positions in the finished promotion race: Neither won the match and neither won the race too.
The match started out rather cagey, although both sides showed plenty of energy trying to penetrate their opponent’s final third effectively. It took about 16 minutes to see a decent chance when N9’s left-winger, Durrkeswaran Ganasan carved out a power shot from the left that stung the palm of UiTM keeper, Nor Haziq Aris.
From there, N9 took control of the match and actually looked likely to score. But perhaps against the run of play, UiTM took the lead following a break in attack. An exchange of passes between Zarko Korac & Park Yong-Jun sees Korac release a through pass for the South Korean and he duly scores in the ensuing one-on-one battle. But, there were heavy suspicions of Yong-Jun being offside and the N9 officials made their anger known to the linesman and then the fourth official. However, resident N9 fan on Twitterjaya, UltraJang provided a screenshot that it may have been a tight call.
https://twitter.com/UltraJangMag/status/1152578016033161216
Nevertheless, N9 went on and continue their work. But on 38 minutes, it could’ve game over for them there and then. Another counter-attack lead by Yong-Jun saw the attacker finding Shafiq Al-hafiz free down the centre and N9 keeper, Mohamad Kaharuddin pulled off an excellent point-blank save to keep the score 1-0.
Just two minutes later, the tie had swung in N9’s favor. Benard Agele fouled Almir Neto and the defender was duly given his marching orders with a second yellow card, that resulted in Maycon Calijuri being sacrificed for another defender in Zulkhairi Zulkeply. Suddenly, there was more belief among the N9 faithful that they can win this.
They continued the pressure on the 10-men UiTM and unsurprisingly, were the better side of the two. They thought they had their reward on the hour mark when after Nor Haziq misjudged a long ball, Dzulfahmi from the right passed it to Almir, who then teed up the much-freer Igor Luiz, only for the striker’s shot to be cleared off the line.
But they didn’t feel perplexed for long. Just three minutes after that, Shunsuke Nakatake swung another one of his trademark brilliant free-kicks just out of Nor Haziq’s reach to get that deserved equalizer. The ball was fully in N9’s court, but their momentum came to a screeching halt just two minutes later.
Aiman Khalidi foolishly went into a challenge that caught Faizal Arif near the UiTM box and the referee had no choice but to show the midfielder a second yellow card and both sides are back even with 10 men.
It was only until the final five minutes that things got really intense. First on 87 minutes, Yong-Jun was able to get into the same situation as his goal early on. But bewilderingly, not only he attempted an unnecessary chip, but that chip was also nowhere near the goal much to UiTM’s confusion.
Just before injury time, N9 was irate when a handball against substitute Syed Ariff was not given and the bench was once again in the face of the linesman. Looking at the replays, they had every right to feel angry about the decision not to give the penalty as Syed Ariff’s hand was in an unnatural position.
Shortly after that, UiTM got into a brilliant 3-on-1 counter situation. The ball was passed to Korac, who bafflingly wasted the diamond-encrusted chance to put away the match by holding the ball for too long that allowed the N9 defence to recover and win the ball back.
Then the final whistle blew. Emotions ran high. Agony, anger, sadness, desolation, take your pick. Either one would be justifiable on how both sides felt when the chance to go up was there for the taking. In the end, it was Pulau Pinang that wind up celebrating with glee and jubilation into the night as they’re the ones going up following a 2-1 victory at PDRM that allowed them to overtake every one of their promotion rivals. As for the rest who are left licking their wounds, they have to shape up as soon as possible due to the upcoming Malaysia Cup campaign.
As of 3:04PM, Sunday, July 21, 2019