Football | AFC Asian Cup: MSAR team to play Myanmar in last group stage match

The Macau SAR football team will make its final appearance in the AFC Asian Cup Group A qualification round today when it faces Myanmar at the Thuwunna Stadium in Yangon.

Sitting at third and fourth place in the four-team group respectively, neither Myanmar nor Macau can qualify for the next stage of the competition, irrespective of today’s outcome. Macau has never managed to qualify for the Asian Cup.

Tomorrow’s game is the sixth match the MSAR team will play in the qualification rounds. The Macau team lost both of its matches against Kyrgyzstan (3-4 at home and 0-1 away), and suffered a double defeat by India (1-4 away and 0-2 at home).

Now the Macau team is set to play its second game against Myanmar after a 0-4 whitewash earlier in the qualification round.

Myanmar has gotten the better of the last two engagements with Macau, taking home 4-0 victories in both the first leg of this competition’s Asian Cup qualifiers and also at the April 2009 AFC Challenge Cup qualifiers.

The Macau SAR team, which ranked 186th in the world by FIFA as of March 15, 2018, is led by captain Cheang Cheng Leong, who plays as a midfielder for C.D. Monte Carlo. The 33-year-old is a record cap-holder in Macau with over 40 appearances.

The Macau team won just one match last year, according to available online records, a friendly played against Laos at the Macau Stadium, where the local team secured a 3-1 victory.