Malaysia stun Korea to qualify for semi-finals

Ipoh, Malaysia, May 8 (UNI) Hosts Malaysia stunned Asian Games champions South Korea 1-0 to book a place for the semi-finals in a Group B match of the Sultan Azlan Shah hockey tournament here today.

Ismail Abu's field goal in the 60th minute gave the Malaysians a rare win over the Koreans. They are now on top of the group with seven points from two wins and one draw.

In another Group B match, Pakistan could only managed a 2-0 win over Canada and they have to beat South Korea for the remaining last four berth from the group.

Pakistan and Korea were tied 2-2 yesterday when power failure led to abandonement of the match which will be resumed tomorrow.

The Pakistanis have four points after two matches. They had drawn their opening match against the Malaysians 2-2.

The Canadians, on the other hand, were already out of the reckoning for a semi-final spot as they had lost their earlier two matches to South Korea (0-1) and Malaysia (0-2).

It did not take long for the Pakistanis to open the scoring from a free hit taken outside the D which was deflected into the goal by Shabbir Khan.

After this, the Canadians held on to their own for a while and restricted the Pakistani moves to the midfield. But as the first half was about to end the Pakistanis scored their second goal.

Akhtar Ali took the ball at the 25 yard line and dribbled his way into the D in the 32nd minute and let fly a hefty shot into the goal (2-0).

The second half saw the Canadians playing a tighter game and they managed to break up the Pakistani attacks early. The Pakistanis missed a series of chances and had to be content with just a two goal margin.

Pakistani coach Islahuddin Siddique later said they should have won by a bigger margin.

''My boys played a good game but those misses could be costly.

The main thing is that we are very much in the semi-final hunt and that makes it an important win,'' he said.

Canadian coach Louis Mendonca lamented their poor performance in the first half for their defeat.

''It was bad first half and we just played flat. The players should have done better and we need to sort that out. The second half was an improvement and we managed to get it moving.

''We are out of the semis but we still have two more matches at the lower end. So we need to regroup and try and do better in those two matches.'' UNI XC PDS SAM HS2044