Lion City Sailors capsize against Indonesia’s Persib in Asian Champions League 2

SINGAPORE – What started out as a promising evening that could have sealed qualification to the Asian Football Confederation Champions League Two’s round of 16 turned out to be a nightmare for the Lion City Sailors as they capsized after blowing a 2-0 lead.

In a turbulent last 15 minutes at the Jalan Besar Stadium, Indonesia’s Persib Bandung scored thrice to win 3-2, a result which saw Group F blown wide open, as Thailand’s Port FC came from behind to beat Zhejiang 2-1 in China.

With nine points after four games, Port now lead Group F of the revamped second-tier continental club competition, with the Sailors dropping to second on seven points.

Persib are third with four points, while Zhejiang are bottom with three. The top two will advance to the last 16.

A defiant Sailors coach Aleksandar Rankovic referred to their remaining games against Zhejiang (Nov 28, away) and Port (Dec 5, home) as “two finals”.

He said: “Football can be cruel... and this loss is a tough pill to swallow. We have to keep the ball a little bit longer and not to look for a third goal if it’s not there.

“They (Persib) looked like they gave up at 2-0, and we brought them back into the game, so that’s on us.”

In front of 3,152 fans, the Singapore Premier League leaders set out to stamp their authority with a bright start and were rewarded with a neat ninth-minute opener.

Maxime Lestienne’s visionary pass from the right was expertly taken down by Shawal Anuar’s left foot while he ran in behind Gustavo Franca and produced an exquisite right-footed lob over goalkeeper Kevin Mendoza.

They established a two-goal cushion when Lionel Tan’s long throw was flicked on by a Persib defender for Lestienne to head in.

Shawal missed a sitter moments later before Tyronne del Pino struck the bar for the visitors in the first half.

After some “nice words” to his players from Persib coach Bojan Hodak at the break, the visitors roared back to life after the restart, with the 66th-minute introduction of half-fit Brazilian striker David da Silva proving impactful.

Lestienne saw his 79th-minute header cleared off the line by Franca, before da Silva sparked the Persib turnaround with his follow-up header three minutes later after Nick Kuipers’ 25-metre shot came off the bar.

Although Mailson Lima’s back-post header was ruled out for a foul in the 85th minute, Persib kept pressing and found a 93rd-minute equaliser through Mateo Kocijan’s 30m thumper.

In a dramatic end to the match two minutes later, an obstruction on Lestienne in Persib’s half was not called and a long ball into the Sailors’ end was missed by Toni Datkovic, as del Pino cut inside Bailey Wright to score past Izwan Mahbud, sending the hundreds of travelling Persib fans into raptures.

Hodak said: “We never did anything in the first half, everything was wrong. We know they are taller, but we gave them three corners and two throw-ins in the first 10 minutes.

“At half-time, I asked the players nicely to try and play better in the second half and you see that nice words open all doors. Even after the disallowed goal, we never gave up.

“This team won the league, so there must be some character in this team. I’m happy we came back and now everything is open.”

The former S-League player, however, had choice words for the Indonesian league, whom he accused of “killing his team” with a fixture pile-up that sees them play eight league and ACL 2 games in 32 days from Nov 28.

He said: “Some people say it is the same in Europe, but Manchester City have two or three squads and private jets. We have 15, 16 players, take budget airlines for seven, eight hours and eat Maggi mee. People think it’s easy but it’s not PlayStation.

“I just hope the league will help us. Between our away match against Port (Nov 28) and home game against Zhejiang (Dec 5), we have an away game at Bali. If they insist we play this game, we cannot do much. If they change the schedule, we can fight to go to the next round.”