After the 0-7 defeat to Vietnam in the opening match of Group A of ASEAN Cup 2026, coach Jose Pedro assessed that the opponent showed superiority and deserved to win.
He said: "Good evening everyone. As we discussed this issue, I think we made some mistakes partly due to the quality of the opponent's team. They dominated in the first half and this half was decided by the result.
Anyway, before starting this process, as I said earlier, playing is very important and of course competition will help the mistakes we are currently making will not be repeated in the future. In general, we faced a stronger team, they played better than us throughout the match and won.
In this match, Vietnam took a 5-0 lead in the first half thanks to goals from Hoang Hen (double), Dinh Bac (double) and Xuan Son. In the second half, Dinh Bac completed a hat-trick before Quang Hai sealed a 7-0 victory for the home team.
The Timor-Leste coach believes that the result accurately reflects the balance between the two teams.
He shared: "I think if someone thought differently, they would have been wrong. As I said yesterday, we have to face the defending champion. We know we will face many difficulties here. The mistakes in the first half against world-class players show that even the smallest mistake must be paid for, and that is exactly what happened. I think they also respect us when bringing out the strongest squad, not hesitating to use stars to face Timor-Leste. This also partly makes us feel encouraged.
Closing the press conference, coach Jose Pedro said that the whole team will quickly put aside the defeat to prepare for the match against Singapore.
He said: "We will try to prepare in the best way possible. Tomorrow we will move to Singapore and there will still be a recovery training session here. I told the players to put aside this match, focus on recovery, speed up that process in tomorrow's training session and then the official training session on the 26th. I have also tried to manage the players in the best way to prepare for the match against Singapore, especially in terms of physical condition. What we want is to achieve our best condition to be able to compete in the next match".
