Home | International Football Competition | 2007 ASEAN Football Championship
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The 2007 AFF Cup was co-hosted by three time champions, Thailand, and defending champions and eventual winners Singapore. The two hosts are the only two teams that have won the championship since its inception in 1996. The qualifying round for the lower ranked teams in Southeast Asia was held at the Panaad Stadium, in Bacolod City, Philippines from November 12-20 2006. This tournament marks the first time that lower ranked teams were required to participate in the qualifying round (in previous tournaments all teams participated in the final tournament). The teams that competed were host nation (for the qualifying round only) the Philippines, Laos, Cambodia, East Timor and Brunei. They were placed in a single group of five with each team playing each other once. The top two teams in the qualifying round, Philippines and Laos, advanced to the finals joined by automatic qualifiers Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia, Myanmar, Vietnam and Indonesia. After a group stage with two pools of four the two host nations met in a two game final. In the first leg of the final, a controversial penalty was awarded to Singapore at the 83rd minute of the match, and the Thailand team walked off the pitch as a protest to the referee's decision. The Thailand team returned to the pitch at the 98th minute, and Singapore later won 2-1. In the second leg of the final, Singapore had a goal controversially chalked off for being offside , but finally drew 1-1 to fellow co-host Thailand, with Khairul Amri scoring the decisive goal in the closing stages of the match, thus giving Singapore their 2nd title in succession, winning with an aggregate score of 3-2, and successfully defending the title. While Thailand can point to the controversial penalty for their defeat in the first leg, they failed to defeat Singapore in the Bangkok second-leg. It could have been worse for Thailand had the match officials seen Thai midfielder Datsakorn Thonglao head-butt Singapore's Khairul Amri to vent his anger after the equaliser. Noh Alam Shah of Singapore was named the tournament's Most Valuable Player and the Golden Boot Award winner for scoring 10 goals, 7 of which came against Laos. Singapore set an AFF Cup record of a 15-match unbeaten run under coach Radojko Avramovic, stretching back to the 2004 Tiger Cup, and 17-match unbeaten run since the 4-0 defeat at home to neighbours Malaysia in the same competition on 18 December 2002. |