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By Kitinan Sanguansak – AFF Thai correspondent
Given the current state of Thailand’s preparations for Wednesday’s decisive World Cup qualifier away to Oman, they only have themselves to blame should Winfried Schaefer’s side fail to make it through the final qualifying round.
Teerasil Dangda
It is quite a frustrating situation as even though the Thai team is lying at the bottom of Group D table prior to the final of round of fixtures, they are still in with a chance to qualify for the final group stage and the manner they have prepared for the game is that of a team who are already resigned to their fate.
A win for Thailand, who have four points from five matches, against third-placed Oman in Muscat coupled with second-placed Saudi Arabia, two points ahead of them, coming away with nothing from their trip to already-qualified Australia would send Schaefer’s men through the next round.
There is a decent likelihood that the fallen giants Saudi Arabia, who have so far endured a poor qualifying campaign by their own standards, with just only one win, will lose to the Australians who beat them 3-1 in Riyadh in their first meeting in September.
But, the question is whether the Thais are ready to pounce on the chance if that opportunity arises.
It appears that only the German coach Schaefer, the man who is owed much credit for helping the Thais stay in contention, who really believed his charges could snatch the only remaining qualifying spot by completing a double over Oman.
The 62-year-old, who took over the post in July just before the Thais embarked on their qualifying campaign, seemed to work alone in preparing the team for what was viewed as the country’s biggest match for years.
Schaefer’s work was at first not helped by the Football Association of Thailand’s decision to extend the training camp in Chiang Mai when a trip to train in the United Arab Emirates was cancelled after failing to secure a proposed friendly with the Middle East team. The short training stint in UAE would have been of great use to the Thais’ preparations in terms of getting acclimatised to the desert conditions.
If the decision to stay training in the country seemed understandable as no one could guarantee having preparation in Middle East would have a desired effect, the Thai FA’s move to draft in unfancied Maldives as a replacement for a tune-up, who the Thais beat 3-0 on Friday, then raised a few questions.
Most teams in the world would arrange a warm-up with the side which is similar in style with the opponents they would face in the competitive match. With all due respect to Maldives, what made the Thai FA believed that Schaefer’s men would gain from a game against the side languishing in 166th place in the world’s ranking?
Despite staying at home, it still would not be too difficult to find Middle East opponents for a game as there were at least Jordan and Kuwait, who are due to play their final qualifying match in the Far East against China and South Korea respectively.
The question was why the FAT did not pick either one of those two teams to provide a pre-cursor to the Oman match. If the cost of holding a training camp in Middle East outweighted the benefit Schaefer’s men would gain, then inviting an Arab side to play a game in the country would make good economical sense.
Given the FAT’s financial status, it should not be a problem even if they decided to take the Thai side to train abroad, though. The Thai FA was by far the country’s best-supported association in term of sponsorship, with Thaibev, the Chang beer maker, just announcing its two-year extension worth of Bt60 million to the long-running contract on Friday.
So, if the Thai side ends up failing to make it through, it would not be too difficult to identify who should take the blame for another failed campaign.
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