Playing on the opponent's artificial turf pitch, the Thai team encountered many difficulties in deploying their playing style. In the first minute, the Turkmenistan team scored the first goal.
After that, Supachai Chaided equalized for the Southeast Asian team. However, the Turkmenistan team maintained good pressure, scoring 2 more goals in the 37th and 66th minutes, to seal a 3-1 victory.
With this result, the Turkmenistan team is at the top of Group D with 6 points. Meanwhile, the Thai team only has 3 points, equal to the Sri Lanka team but has a better secondary index. This loss put coach Masatada Ishii under great pressure, because the possibility of Thailand not being able to participate in the 2027 Asian Cup is entirely possible.
Regarding the reason for the defeat, Mr. Ishii said: "The Turkmenistan team has a clear playing style, that is the reason why we lost. In addition, their squad has about 8-9 players from a club, who know each other very well. That made it difficult for us.
The Thai team still played well, implementing the correct tactics, but the Turkmenistan defense played very strongly, it was difficult to penetrate and I did not think that tactics were the reason for the first goal".
The loss to Turkmenistan highlighted many weaknesses of the Thai team. That is the ability to adapt when playing on artificial turf, the defense is prone to making mistakes, some stars like Chanathip Songkrasin did not play as expected.
In addition, the Thai team's squad is not rated too highly in terms of depth, the reserve players do not make a difference when the starting lineup is at a dead end...
The Thai team still has a lot of work to do if they want to qualify for the 2027 Asian Cup. In addition to being relegated in Group D, the loss to Turkmenistan also caused Thailand to drop in the rankings. It is expected that the Southeast Asian team will jump out of the Top 100, falling from 99th to 102nd in the world.
