The Olyroos’ dream of constructing it to the Paris Olympics has suffered a grievous blow as Australia’s younger soccer hopefuls crashed to a woeful 1-0 defeat by the hands of Indonesia in qualifying in Qatar.
Nonetheless unable to attain a single objective after 180 minutes within the males’s U23 Asian Cup, coach Tony Vidmar’s outfit could have suffered a terminal blow after Indonesian Komang Teguh netted the objective simply earlier than halftime that gave the event debutants a shock win in Doha on Thursday.
The nightmare objective for the ‘Roos on the Abdullah bin Khalifa Stadium got here after 20-year-old Socceroo Mohamed Toure had his Twenty fifth-minute penalty saved by Indonesia’s diving hero Ernando Ari Sutaryadi.
It is left the blunt Olyroos with only one level from their two video games and the grim prospect of not even reaching the knockout levels of an occasion by which they’ve to complete third to ensure a spot in Paris.
Indonesia had misplaced 2-0 to Qatar on Monday and now Vidmar’s facet, who drew 0-0 towards Jordan of their opening match, should defeat the hosts within the closing spherical of group matches on Sunday to have any hope of progressing.
The Olyroos’ much-vaunted attacking high quality, with Garang Kuol, Alou Kuol and Toure up entrance, as soon as once more did not materialise as solely 4 of their 16 makes an attempt on objective discovered the goal.
In the meantime, Komang’s close-range headed objective was the one considered one of their 4 goalbound makes an attempt to search out the goal.
The closest Australia got here to scoring was when Toure, moments after his penalty miss, virtually made amends by heading towards the bar from a nook.
World Cup hero Garang Kuol got here on as a part of a triple substitution within the seventy fifth minute with Vidmar getting ever extra determined, however even with 11 minutes of time added on, his facet nonetheless could not break down some cussed defending.
