BRAZIL BREAKS THROUGH CHINESE WALL FOR FIRST THREE POINTS


KUALA LUMPUR (29 Jan 2008) – China put up a stoic defensive wall against Brazil but crumbled in the end under the pressure from the South American team to concede a 4-0 loss in the first game of Group B of the KL Word 5s at the Stadium Negara in Kuala Lumpur.

Former world champions Brazil, who are the favourites to win the title this year, had just came off a long flight from Libya but showed their class and picked up their first three points in the KL World 5s with a brace each from William Morais and Lenisio Junior.

“I am generally satisfied with the performance of the players, even though the team had just spent 40 hours travelling from Libya to Malaysia,” said Brazil head coach Paulo Cesar Oliveira.

“What’s important from now is that the players can train in the morning and then play matches in the afternoon. If we can consistently do that, then we will have a great chance of making the semi-final and then the final.”

But while expectations were abound that Brazil would just stroll over their opponents this afternoon, China proved that they are determined to provide more than just token resistance when they took the game to their better known counterparts.

In spite of the early pressure, Brazil were quick on the counter-attack with several attempts coming off the crossbar. And it was not until the introduction of Morais that they finally broke the deadlock when he slammed home a rebounder in the 13th minute for the lead.

A minute after the restart, Morais was again on target from an acute angle before he played provider for Junior a minute later.

The fourth and final goal came off the excellent combination of Morais and Junior as the latter grabbed his second of the afternoon after drawing Chinese keeper Zheng Tao off his line.

“We have made some progress in the last few months but I think that the players did well to play against a big team like Brazil,” said Chinese head coach Farinha, a Brazilian.

“They have learnt some things from the match against Brazil today and they must make use of them when they play the remaining matches in the group.”





Posted by Luca Ranocchiari --> luca.ranocchiari@futsalplanet.com