I didn't watch all the matches but was keeping a tab of all the results, Malaysia indeed surprised all by beating Thailand, I was lucky not to play on Malaysia. I feel both the teams are competitive, while Vietnam are the favourites they'll be foolish to underestimate Malaysian side. I'll agree games like these tend to be rough, and it's fun to watch them, I'm not playing but I feel your bet is safe we should see plenty of goals in this match.
Yeah, I actually don't watch national games as much as I used to in the 90s or even early 2000s. The national team (Malaysia) used to have a good number of players from my state, and that was when I'd watch every match of my home team, until the very shameful disgrace of all of them caught enjoying drugs on a night out. Everyone got kicked out... I didn't recognise my team anymore, we got relegated two divisions and have never recovered til today.
Think we got one or two players who sometimes still makes the national squad but no good first-11s. But since our striker won the Puskas 2 years back, we've been playing good football again. There's still a huge dearth of quality, we're far from the 1970s golden era, but we're getting a bit better at physical presence and pitches are somewhat improving.
Vietnam eventually won 1-0. Every game leading up to final had been averaging 3.2 goals so the last game was probably a letdown... we live to fight another day, but all credit to team Vietnam.
Underdog of the tourney to me apart from Malaysia were the Philippines too. Guess Sven isn't past his shelf life yet!
