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The Serbian was understandably ecstatic to guide Philippines to their first win in the group stage and now sets his sights at the semi-final.
The 2019 Southeast Asian (SEA) Games host finally got their football campaign up and running as they picked up their first win in Group A after three attempts by narrowly beating Malaysia 1-0 at the Rizal Memorial Stadium on Friday night.
After only a 1-1 draw against Cambodia on the opening day that was followed by a 2-1 defeat to Myanmar in the second match, Goran Milojevic knew that his players had to get something from this match to re-ignite their hopes of reaching the knockout stage and they did just that.
“This was a very difficult match because a negative result would have taken us out of the running for the semi-final. We had to be proactive to win and the players did well to follow the instructions given. In all honesty, we did well in all three games thus far and we deserved this win. We are very happy with the result.
“We did our scouting and we knew that Malaysia are a team with a lot of qualities. We were suprised a little bit by Malaysia’s formation and we had to go for a very offensive approach, thankfully the players accepted and applied themselves as how we wanted,” said Milojevic after the match.
Captain Stephan Shrock was the standout performer on the home side, coming up with the crucial winner in the second half straight from a corner kick which Haziq Nadzli failed to read at his near post. The German-born was however lucky to have stayed on the pitch after his over the top challenge on Hadi Fayyadh was only deemed to be a yellow card offence.
Philippines will now get a slightly longer breather and recovery days as they will not be involved in the next match day for the group on Monday before finishing off their group stage with a match against point-less Timor Leste on Wednesday.
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