The day before the game Dom, Tom and I shared our pre-season previews which were unanimously pessimistic about Port’s T1 chances this season. 90 minutes into the season and Port made us all look a little bit silly with a performance of style, energy and panache which, although it was against truly abject opponents, bodes well for the weeks to come.
In our latest 2020 season preview, we hear from stalwart Swatcat fan Russ John, the man behind one of Thai football’s longest-running English language sites, The Swatcat Blog. And this seems like a suitable moment to send our condolences to the families of those killed in Saturday’s awful mass shooting in Korat, and to wish the survivors a speedy recovery. A terrible event and not the kind of thing you expect to happen in Thailand.
Gush, pond; —Foam, roll on the bridge and over the woods; —black palls and organs, lightning and thunder, rise and roll; —waters and sorrows, rise and unleash the Floods.
The young, bohemian French poet Arthur Rimbaud probably didn’t have a sodden night at the PAT Stadium in mind when he wrote those words in 1873 but he could have delivered them last night whilst standing in Zone B without anybody batting an eyelid. Being more prosaic, it was a washout; just what is it with the weather and this fixture? A similar storm subjected the reverse game to a long delay, the match probably finishing four hours after kick-off.
Thankfully, commonsense prevailed on this occasion and a game that really shouldn’t have started at all was finally abandoned after another considerable, pointless wait. Not that I was aware at the time as myself and a few others had decamped to a bar to be dazzled by Bobby Firmino’s audacious skillset.
For three farcical minutes players splashed and skidded, in pursuit of a ball that seemed to be having more fun than its pursuers. A skewed shot from Josimar was the only recognizable piece of football action in a period when serious injuries could have been sustained. The oles and mock cheers which accompanied every attempt at a pass or tackle only enhanced the pantomime atmosphere.
The game will be rearranged for a future evening when the Rain Gods are sleeping.
As there is no match report to pore over I have unearthed this article from The Guardian on famous football abandonments. Enjoy while you dry out.
https://www.theguardian.com/football/blog/2014/nov/07/joy-of-six-football-abandonments
An away trip to Korat had not really appealed to me before, just one look at the stadium had me thinking “Nope!”, but over a Leo fueled conversation in the Sandpit (aren’t they all?) last weekend, Dom had sold me on the idea of making the trip as this is one of our only away games that falls on a Saturday night thus allowing enough time to travel up for the weekend. I traveled up by bus on Friday, the journey taking pretty much exactly four hours for a measly 209 baht.
I traveled to the game with Dom and Derek, Dom had managed to book an accommodating taxi driver by the name of Mr Bandit who was happy to drop us off at the stadium and wait in the car park to pick us up after the match, it turned out he would have to be even more accommodating than we thought….
On arriving at the stadium the Port fans were already gathering, eating and drinking with a large crowd of Korat fans who were also laying on free food and refreshments for the traveling Port faithful. A friendly sing-off was taking place between the two sets of fans, this had been one of the friendliest welcomes I’d experienced since Sukhothai or Chonburi. I couldn’t help noticing one of the fans had bought a 42” TV to the game, who brings their own TV to the game and why??? I would get an answer to that later!
Sergio’s impromptu game of dodgeball had not endeared him to the referee last week, so with him suspended, Jadet opted to play Sumanya behind Boskovic with Pakorn and Bordin on the wings. Kevin was still injured so Adisorn would continue as a makeshift left-back and it seemed maybe David wasn’t quite ready after all as he didn’t make the matchday squad.
I took my spot in the bleachers (what on earth are ‘bleachers’? – Americanophobe Ed), of all the running-track stadiums I’ve visited so far, this one was slightly more bearable. While away fans were still too far from the pitch, the home support was impressive, and with the stadium around half to 60% full, there was actually something of an atmosphere on all four sides of the pitch.
The opening exchanges were pretty cagey with neither team having huge spells of pressure or possession, this pattern would continue through the match. On the ninth minute, a neat pass from Sumanya found Bordin on the wing, he cut in and unleashed a shot which Korat keeper and “Friend of Zone B” Cunningham tipped around the post. The ensuing corner from Sumanya eventually found its way to an unmarked Boskovic at the back post but his shot was easily gathered by Cunningham.
In the 41st minute, Bosko tee’ed up Go but his shot was pretty high and wild. Straight up the other end, Korat had their best chance of the half, Leandro unleashing a dipping volley from 25 yards that deflected off Dolahs back before hitting a post and bouncing awkwardly in front of Watchara.
In first half injury time, we thought Bordin had broken the deadlock after firing a shot over Cunningham that looked to have nestled in the top of the net but had actually gone over it and landed behind the goal.
The ref blew for halftime with the score still locked at 0-0, in the distance we could see lightning, and sure enough the heavens opened at half-time. When the second half kicked off, I was one of the few foolhardy souls who made it out for the start of the second half. What I witnessed for the next few minutes was a total farce with the ball getting stuck at regular intervals and players slipping and sliding all over the place. In a rare move of Thai referee sensibility; he quickly halted proceedings after about 4 minutes of attempted play.
Upon returning to the concourse I found all the Port fans and many Korat fans had gathered around the earlier mentioned 42” TV, which was also connected to a TRUE box showing the game. While the TV showed ball-boys and staff trying to scrape the pitch of surface water using advertising hoardings, the Port and Korat faithful’s had what I can only describe as a good old “Cockney knees up” as the rain continued to fall. The rain showed no sign of letting up so the singing (and drinking) carried on for another hour, Thai football has a habit of throwing out some wild and random fan experiences and this was definitely in that bracket.
While the rain had stopped and the pitch had been cleared of the worst, it was still very slippy and slidy out there and at times it began to resemble a slapstick scene from a silent movie. From a relatively tame Korat corner, what should have been a routine catch for Watchara was dropped but he was able to gather it again before any of the Korat forwards could pounce.
On the 76th minute, Bordin was impeded near the edge of the box after a mazy run and Pakorn stepped up on the subsequent free-kick, initially it looked as if he had fired it straight at the wall but it smashed a Korat defender in the face, wrong footed Cunningham and nestled in the bottom corner to send the drenched Klong Toey faithful into raptures of joy. This joy was short lived however as from their next attack, we were about to see another red card for Port. While things had been very friendly between the two sets of fans all afternoon, Adisorn tried to take it one step further, holding Korat winger Amadou’s hand as Amadou tried to get free of him. Adisorn was already on a yellow and began marching off before the ref could produce the red card. In Kevin’s absence it’s a shame we don’t have a better back-up option at left-back, Yossawat doesn’t seem to be part of Jadet’s plans and Panpanpong can’t be trusted to actually track back. Adisorn does a solid job in the midfield but he’s clearly not a full-back and makes the team a bit lopsided with only Niti playing as a more adventurous full-back down the right and Adisorn becoming exposed against Scary Foreign Strikers on the left.
Port had the chance to put the Swatcats to bed with only three minutes left, a neat ball over the top had left Arthit beating the offside trap and in acres of space, A Korat defender foolishly slid in the wet surface to stop him and went flying past Arthit and probably landed somewhere near the 100m finish line, however Arthit pussyfooted around a bit too much with his shot, and Cunningham didn’t exactly have to show cat-like reflexes to scoop up his eventual shot.
That missed chance would haunt Port a couple of minutes later, an opportunistic up and under found its way to Korat winger Naruphol, Port substitute Athibordhee now at left back, stuck out a leg, while the initial contact looked to be outside the area, Naruphol applied some real alleycat tactics by hooking his trailing leg around Athibordees in mid-air landing in the box. The ref pointed to the spot and Ivorian striker Henry sent his penalty into the top corner, sliding through a puddle as the Swatcat fans purred with delight. Perhaps the referee had caught wind of the fans’ “Festival of Friendship” taking place today and didn’t want to send one team home unhappy? The final whistle came not long after, for the second week running Port had been pegged back to 1-1 and finished the game with 10 men.
The game kicked off at 5.45pm and finished just shy of 9.00pm, by far the longest match I’ve ever attended, luckily our taxi driver was still waiting. This felt like 2 points dropped, and with Buriram catching fast with games in hand, next months clash between the two could have really high stakes.
Korat was quite a sleepy city, upon meeting Dom and Del after the game, the bars seemed to all shut dead on midnight but we were barely getting started at that time. A 20 minute walk around the city like desperate beer zombies, we finally found a late night restaurant still serving beer and also showing the German Cup Final. One discussion we had was about the awkward situation Arthit and his like find themselves in, all T1 teams (and most T2) use their foreign quota on recruiting “Scary Foreign Strikers”, so as a result, Thai players tend to fill midfield, full-back and goalkeeper positions. Thai strikers lack game time which makes it hard for them to establish themselves. Sadly, misses like the one Arthit made last night will do little to encourage Jadet to give him more game time.
From my lofty position about a mile from the pitch, it was hard to pick out the nuances of separate player performances, so being 6ft5 was a bonus here for Elias!. I picked him last night because even during the farcical second half where all the other players were falling over and kicking it into puddles, Dolah’s reading of the game remained calm and error free, he made key blocks without sliding in and his distribution choices were correct given the lake around him.
When David got injured at the first game, it instantly raised a worry about the Port defence but what has happened is that Dolah has really stepped up this season and formed a very good partnership with Todsapol.
With images of Saturday’s requiem still imposed on the memory, the club and its fans must now move on, unforgetting, but conscious of the desire to leave a legacy for the departed. The crowd played a full part in this with their moving ceremonies, while the players gave us something to believe in on the pitch.
The Swatcats surprised us all with an impressive 7th place finish last season, and also delighted us Port fans by losing to us 4-0 both home & away. Can they repeat last season’s top half finish, whilst also providing us with another 6 points? Here’s Brit Swatcat fan Russ John, editor of The Swatcat Blog (one of Thai football’s longest-established English language fan sites) with his thoughts on the season ahead…
Port made a quick exit from this year’s Leo Cup last night, going down 1-0 to the Swatcats in a feisty affair in Korat. With both sides looking very rusty, quality football was at a premium whilst the ref had a busy night indeed, the FAT’s vaunted “respect the officials” campaign clearly having gone way over the heads of both sets of players.
Following the success of last year’s pre-season tournament, an expanded 2019 Leo Cup gets underway this week with 12 Thai clubs and 4 ASEAN invitees competing for the trophy. Port, as one of the greatest teams in the entire world, have been given a bye into the QFs where they will play away to Nakhon Ratchasima tomorrow night (18:00, on True4U). You can see the full format below: Quite how this all works remains a mystery. Port have a QF against Korat, but if they win they will then play another QF against one of the ASEAN clubs. If they win that, it appears that they will go straight into a 3rd-place playoff which kicks off at exactly the same time as the semi final they just played, the FAT having clearly developed revolutionary timewarp technology. According to the above it is already technically impossible for them to make the final. Anyway, tomorrow is the first opportunity to get a look at the 2019 Port side (minus Sumanya who is with the Thai national team at the Asian Cup) in what should be a tricky but eminently winnable tie against the Swatcats. The game kicks off at 18:00 and will be on True4U.
Port return home this Saturday to face Nakhon Ratchasima after a disappointing run of form. I was talking with Hockers trying to remember our last win, anyone?…….. Trat away July 25th. Our last league win?…….. Police Tero July 21st. I know we’ve had a break, but it comes to something when you are struggling to remember the last win for a fourth placed team.
So where is the bright side? Nakhon Ratchasima are in town, also known as Korat and the Swatcats both are a lot easier to write so I’ll use those. Four months ago Port won 4-0 in Korat, oh the heady days of 4-0 away wins. If Port have confidence against anyone it should be these Swatcats. Korat are a better side now with two recent wins and a creditable draw against Bangkok United. These results have pulled them into mid table safety. But wait what’s that coming up over the Korat plateau to save Port? It’s a Wednesday fixture in the league Cup semi final. Korat vs Chiang Rai a definite highlight for the Swatcats in a difficult season. The semi final is on the Wednesday 19th. Korat rest them, rest them all, the big and the tall and the small. Has it come to this? Hoping the other team field a weakened side? Yes, Yes it has.
For those wanting to play “have they got their first team out bingo” the player numbers you are looking for are,
4, 11, 15, 25, 27, 32, 37, 77
If a player is not in the starting line up just cross him off your bingo card. If all of these players are not in the starting line up shout “BINGO WE ARE SET FOR A WINGO” and receive your free large bottle of Leo with an amaretto chaser. Be careful not to celebrate too much, check first their absence isn’t due to the Korat team bus crashing.
Dolah is out, those two yellows take his card tally up to 8 this year so he’ll serve a second suspension. More bad news on the suspension front Pakorn (7) is back. I guess he’ll be rested, so he will bound onto the pitch with nervous energy for three and a half minutes then settle down for a nice stroll. There were patches of decent play in the Chiang Rai, match Kevin proved he can take a decent corner, so we will see if there is any discussion around the corner flag at the weekend. Unfortunately Nurul’s wayward free kicks didn’t make the case for prising the ball out of Pakorn’s hands come free kick time. We’ll probably see a traditional Port line up. Anon(20) should get the shout to start but probably won’t. If Nurul’s injury was serious Jadet will probably start Bodin in his place.
Worawut(36)
Nittipong (34) ,Rochela(22), Tossapol(6) Kevin(97)
Pakorn (7), Siwakorn(16) Suarez (5) Kim(8) Nurul(31)
Boskovic (23)
With this run of form you have to wonder how much the players are trying. If Jadet really wanted to do something different he could just pick the eleven players trying to do something.
Rattanai (trying to get back from injury)
Nittipong (genuinely trying)
Rochela (trying to remember what it was like playing for a sane club)
Dolah with a huge false mustache (trying to play even though he’s suspended)
Kevin (trying to get in the national team)
Terens (trying to do remind Jadet he exists)
Kim (trying to communicate with anyone)
Adisorn (trying to tower over Terens in order to look taller)
Nurul (trying to win a free kick)
Boskovic (trying to play anywhere but up front)
Artit Bunyinda (trying to score, always trying to score not actually doing it)
My Prediction Port 5-4 Korat
A barnstorming game against a second choice Korat team and a Terens last minute winner. You can call me crazy for predicting this, but what do we have left in the season? Not much, a fading hope of 3rd place, a Terens winner would be genuinely worth celebrating.
I asked Korat fan Russ about the match and the Korat players to watch. Russ writes regularly about the Swatcats at http://russjohn1000.blogspot.com/
I also asked Russ what he thought of Port’s season, I should have just asked what he thought about the first half of the season.
An intriguing match up given the relative current runs of form of the two protagonists. Port on an awful run of results and fading fast, the Swatcats, after strengthening the squad, resurgent with an encouraging set of second leg results moving them up to a respectable 8th place.
Whether the visitors will field a full strength team with next week’s League Cup semi final imminent is up for debate but the match should provide Port with a chance to placate their fans with a dominant display over a pretty ordinary Swatcat side.
Swatcat men to look out for? – well actually we have no real stars; we are just a hardworking set of players who give 100% and who play for each other. Samuel Cunningham(11) in goal has been a real hero at times this season and has undoubtedly saved the team a few points. Everyone knows Leandro Assumpcao (77), of course and now back after injury he will be a threat up front. My third pick for men to watch is an unlikely hero. Watch out for Yayah Kunath (27) (if he plays) buzzing around just behind the front men.
My views on Port’s season so far you may not wish to hear…. their season has been like opening a bottle of champagne – the cork is popped, lots of fizz, then everything goes flat. I have watched a few Port games on TV and performances have been erratic. In the recent game against Chainat I seriously thought that they had all been out on the pop the night before. The reality is of course they have stopped playing for coach Jadet.
I am no tactician but whenever I see Port, I see a team in a rush to get forward with men streaming forward in a ridiculously cavalier fashion. This will of course lead to the occasional super performance when individuals perform well but for a sustainable approach and success, they need to put their foot on the ball and build slowly from the back.
With the team in danger of finishing a disappointing 6th how long will Pang maintain interest? Jadet has to go of course, then hopefully the light bulb will come on and Port will attempt to temper expectations and build for a sustainable future….I suspect given the bumpy road that Port fans have learnt to expect, there is nil chance of this happening.
My match prediction Port 2 Nakhon Ratchasima 0
Port FC vs Nakhon Ratchasima FC, Saturday 15 September 18:00 at PAT Stadium and live on True Sport HD3
“Never write match reports when you’ve had a few beers”, as Graham Greene once wrote (The End of the Affair, 1951), but bollocks to it, it’s not often you get home from the pub having seen Port win 4-0 away after bossing a game on the road the way they generally do at home. Yes, the Swatcats were dreadful, by far the worst team we’ve played all season, but this was the kind of performance that makes you think Port have turned a corner after the watershed moment that was Chainat. Can you turn a corner after a watershed? Am I mixing too many metaphors here? Who cares. We are Tarua, and we are 3rd in the league.
Several factors contributed to a complete absence of Sandpitters at the 80th Anniversary Stadium tonight. Many of us are still scarred by that trip to Chainat; Port’s away form doesn’t in any way justify a 10-hour return trip on a Sunday night; and we tend not to like stadiums where you need the fucking Hubble Telescope to watch the action. So we convened at The Sportsman where as usual the game was on a big screen and the beer was flowing like the sacred waters of the Chao Phraya as they pass majestically by the fragrant docksides of Khlong Thoey.
Port started the game in a fairly generic formation, Suarez (5) returning in place of Bodin (10), who can consider himself very unfortunate after his superb performance against Chiang Rai last week. Such is life at Port, where reputations count for more than form. Dolah (4) kept his place after his superb show last weekend, and Worawut (36) replaced Rattanai who was presumably injured as he didn’t even make the bench.
Now at The Sandpit we try to operate on a glass-half-full basis as regards the development of Thai football, but it has to be said that the first half of this game was absolutely dreadful, and about as good an advertisement for the Thai game as Ed Sheeran is for British music. It was, frankly, fucking shocking. And yet, amidst the incompetence, Port somehow emerged at half-time with a 1-0 lead, after Boskovic (23) casually wandered through a static Swatcat defence to fire a header at our old friend Cunningham which, to be fair, the latter miraculously managed to save, only for the ball to fall to Nurul (31) who buried the fucker in the corner.
The little winger (who, according to Sandpitter Tommie Duncan, looks like a marmoset) should’ve made it 2-0 minutes later when put in the clear by a sublime pass from the otherwise nondescript Pakorn (7), but, thinking he was offside, he fluffed his chip over the keeper.
So 1-0 to Port at half-time when it could easily have been much more, but with Port dominating the game, and the Swatcats offering little other than a succession of fouls (the ludicrous Rangel being the worst offender, as per usual), hopes were high for the second half, hopes which – for a change – were fulfilled.
I think it’s well known that, so far this season, The Sandpit hasn’t been particularly impressed with Port’s marquee signing Dragan Boskovic (23), and our frustration boiled over after the Chainat defeat, when we gave the big Montenegrin a bit of what we Brits euphemistically refer to as ‘stick’. To his credit, Bosko has responded and in the second half tonight he grabbed hold of the Swatcat and, ignoring the hissing and the slashing of claws, proceeded to tear it a new feline arsehole. On 65 minutes he latched onto a lovely through ball from Suarez and blasted it past Zone B favourite Cunningham for 2-0, and then, on 90 minutes, slotted away a penalty (after a foul on Nurul) to put the cherry on the cake for Port who were already 3-0 up after a classic Suarez 6-yard poacher goal in the 66th minute.
This was a VAR game, and was yet another advertisement for why this ridiculous concept has no place in football, with the ref wasting several minutes watching incidents and then either making the right decision (sending off Ekkachai) or the wrong decision (allowing the appalling Rangel to stay on the pitch), leaving us wondering what the point of watching the video was in the first place. Please, let the game flow, embrace its randomness and errors, and leave this insistence on “fairness” to inferior sports. Football isn’t a sport, it’s a culture, a reflection of life itself, and as such it can’t be ‘decided’ by video evidence.
Anyway, Port won 4-0 away and played with the kind of confidence and swagger they show at the PAT and which we’ve been begging them for years to show away from home. It was a dominant performance from a team who have reacted to the Chainat shambles in the right way and are playing as a tight, compact unit. Yes, there are still faults – Kim (8) just isn’t the DM we hoped he would be; Siwakorn (16) had an absolute shocker; and Pakorn (7) no longer justifies a starting place. But this was a performance that gives us hope that Port’s top 3 place isn’t just a flash in the pan but is genuinely sustainable. Apart from Buriram & Bangkok Utd, T1 is a carnival of shite, and right now, Port are proving less consistently shite than those around them, so a good finish beckons.
Finally, 14 games into the season, we’ve seen the player who banged in 38 goals last season. Bosko was on top form tonight, not giving Korat’s defenders a moment’s peace, running his arse off and adding two goals to his tally for the season. Runners up – Dolah, Suarez, Nitipong.