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Wednesday, April 02, 2014

 

Arema Leave It Late In AFC Cup

Arema left it late, oh so late, but the ever reliable Cristian Gonzales popped up deep into injury time to secure a nervy victory and gave Arema the advantage ahead of their next AFC Cup tie against Selangor on 16 April.

Arema had scored twice in three first half minutes to give them what surely would be an unassailable lead over Maziya S&C. First Gonzales, then Gustavo Lopes.

With the Maldives side without a win in their opening three games and playing in front of a partisan 25,000 plus crowd they surely couldn't come back.

But come back they bloody well did with Amdhan on 62 minutes and Abdullah four minutes later setting up a nervy 20 minutes or so.

How nervy? I was checking my twitter feed and it seemed no Arema source was mentioning the score! It was almost as if a collective force had decided to just take a deep breath and do the bare minimum until the job was done.

In the other game, Selangor overcame leaders Hanoi T&T 3-1 at Shah Alam Stadium, inflicting the Vietnamese side's first defeat in the group stage.

And as has happened so many times this season it was Paolo Rangel who did the scoring, netting a 15 minute first half hat trick.

Next weeks sees Hanoi travel to the Maldives while Arema host Selangor a week later.

1 - Hanoi T&T 4 3 0 1 10-5 9
2 - Arema 4 2 1 1 8-7 7
3 - Selangor 4 1 2 1 5-4 5
4 - Maiziya 4 0 1 3 5-12 1



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