Saturday, November 19, 2011
Thai Coach Apologises
The Thai football team yesterday offered apologises to fans for their early exit at the SEA Games.
The squad returned home yesterday after three defeats and only one win in Group A at the biennial event.
"I apologise to our fans for our failure," said coach Prapol Pongpanich.
"I and some other officials will take a break from football for a while."
He said several players had to play for the full national side in their World Cup qualifying campaign while others got injured.
And Prapol believes there must be better management and planning before a tournament.
"I think the president of the Thai FA [Worawi Makudi] knows this problem because he watched every game at the stadium," he said.
Striker Ronnachai Rangsiyo said: "I know how the fans feel but I can assure you that everybody gave their all. We had only a short preparation period while other countries trained for a long time before the tournament."
Thailand lost to Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia and beat Cambodia at the SEA Games. It was the first time in Games history that Thailand suffered two consecutive first-round exits.
Thailand had won the football gold eight times in a row before going out in the opening round in the previous tournament in Laos in 2009.
COMMENT - sorry, I have done nothing with the structure of this story. It is just the writing style of a professional journalist where one sentence equals one paragraph.
