Thailand women national team will look back at the 2019 FIFA Women World Cup in France and sigh, phew! What a world cup they've had. The Chaba Kaew, as Thailand women team is known as, conceded a whopping 20-group-stage goal and scored a solitary goal in reply, as they bowed out of the tournament with dropped shoulders.
Having made their world cup debut at the last tournament in 2015 hosted by Canada, Thailand conceded 10 goals losing 0-4 each to both Germany and Norway respectively and then recorded a remarkable 3-2 victory over Ivory Coast. Thailand was expected to give a more competitive challenge in this year's tournament, however, the Chaba Kaew instead have gone from bad to worst, doubling their goal conceded from 10 in 2015 to 20 in 2019, scored even lesser 1 compared to 3 in the maiden world cup.
It's a moanday blog, @pete kind gesture for all, see link for details.
It all went down in a crazy week in which Thailand conceded 18 goals in 2 goal-feast matches. They met the defending champion, United State of America in their 1st Group F match, of course, no one expected them to beat the USA, but no one expected them to lose 13 nil either. The 1st-half of the match as expected ended against Thailand in a respectable 0-3, but then came the rain in the 2nd-half.
The ripple effect of the 13-nil scoreline in the women game meant that the scoreline is now the biggest goal margin in the world cup beating Germany's previous 11 nil over Argentina in the 2007 tournament. Also, having scored 13 goals in a match, the USA would go on to score further 5 goals in subsequence 2 matches to record a total of 18 goals in a world cup group matches, beating the previous record of 17 group-stage goals scored by Norway in 1995.
The Thailand team were inconsolable at full time, tears rolling down the players' faces and some neutrals sympathise with them, I was close to tears when TV camera captured a little girl who was in tears in her mum's arms and the scoreline was still 10 nil as at then. The 13 nil result prompted reactions from popular social media and 2 of the tweets that caught my attention were from certain @stevros1988 and @SoccerCooligans.
It was barely 6 days and the dust was yet to settle, Thailand was hit yet again, 5 times by Sweden in their 2nd group match. Thailand was 3 nil down in the 1st-half but was able to tighten up at the back to avoid further collapse like against the USA. They even manage a goal of their own, as it ended 1-5 at full time. Surprisingly, the Thailand women ended up shedding tears once again, this time, tear of joy and appreciation for getting on the scoresheet.
the goal made us laugh, made us smile and makes us happy, ... it meant that all of our preparation paid off- Manager Nuengrutai Srathongvian.
Thailand went on to lose their last group match 0-2 to Chile and amass a total of 20 conceded goals, surpassing the record of the most goal conceded in the women world cup, held by Argentina in 2007 when they finished with 18 goals conceded. All the tournament's 1st timer(Chile, Jamaica, Scotland and South Africa) conceded far lesser goals.
On a brighter note, Thailand can take solace in the fact that she lost to teams ranked higher than her on FIFA roster, and considering another fact that the Thailand domestic football league was abandoned for 14 months in 2017, a world cup qualifications was really a remarkable feat, they are still a work on progress and will surely come back stronger like a German philosopher once said,
what doesn't kill you, makes you stronger - Friedrich Nietzsche?
ps: As the moanful blogs and comments about the state of scorum flies in from left, right and centre, some of them for good reasons, I wanna employ you all to stay optimistic, even if the heaven we'd hope for still seems far, it takes little or no energy to look at things from a brighter side.
We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars - Oscar Wilde.
Thank you for your time and support.
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