Zubir’s Two Goals Help Singapore Beat Japan in Front of 6,341 Spectators – 03.12.2018

The atmosphere at the morning match was really great! 6,341 people have found their way into the O2 Arena, most of them being schoolchildren from all over the country. It was the biggest crowd on the Singapore – Japan match in the history. And as expected, they saw a tough game, which Singaporeans eventually deservedly won. Because of the defeat, Japan is out of the play-off run.

At the beginning the match was quite close. At 3:13 the Singaporean forward Hafiz Zubir opened the score with his first career WFC goal. But as the game went on the Singaporeans were getting better and gaining the upper hand. But goals were scored on both sides. Until the first break, Danjiro Maeda of Japan and Mazran Sutiman of Singapore both scored twice. For the 27-year-old Maeda this is even his first career international tournament at all.

Early into the second period, the Singaporean dominance was already huge. They controlled the ball and the Japanese players only focused on defense. But the Singaporeans couldn’t find a way to the Japanese net. Ichiro Ueda, a Swedish native and the Japanese captain, added two goals in the second period and completed a hat-trick. Thanks to his goals from counter-attacks Japan won the middle period 2-1 and tied the score at 5-5 before the second intermission.

In the last period, the Singaporeans kept controlling the pace of the game and they also finally found a way to score. Two goals by Vignesa Pasupathy sent Singapore into a 7-5 lead. Although the Japanese were down by two goals, their game plan didn’t really change. They were still waiting on their half of the rink in a defensive formation and let Singapore be the creative side. And so Singapore netted two more goals to win 9-5. Mazran Sutiman assisted on the last one and is the team’s scoring leader with 5 points (3+2).