Brunei in the 2012 AFF Suzuki Cup

Brunei in action in the 2012 AFF Suzuki Cup (Source: www.affsuzukicup.com)
Congratulations Brunei Football Team!

Brunei did very well in the qualifying round of the AFF Suzuki Cup recently completed in Yangon, Myanmar. We beat Cambodia (3-2) and Timor Leste (2-1) but lost out to Myanmar (0-1) and Laos (1-3). By beating Timor Leste, we prevented them from qualifying but allowing Laos to qualify instead. In the end, Myanmar ended up with 10 points, Laos 7 points and Brunei with Timor Leste only 1 point behind at 6 points and Cambodia propping up the table with no point.

Personally I don't see the point of having a qualfying round when there are only 10 + Timor Leste teams in the whole ASEAN. We could just have two groups of 5 and 6 and play directly in the ASEAN Football Championship. Unfortunately it is not for me to say. Perhaps it is just to make it more exciting.

For those who do not know what Brunei has been playing for, here is a short summary courtesy of Wikipedia:

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"The ASEAN Football Championship (AFF Championship), is a biennial international association football competition organized by the ASEAN Football Federation (AFF), contested by the national teams of Southeast Asia. It was founded as the Tiger Cup after Singapore-based Asia Pacific Breweries, makers of Tiger Beer, sponsored the competition from its inauguration in 1996 until the 2004 edition. The competition was renamed as the ASEAN Football Championship for the 2007 edition as a result of a termination of the sponsorship deal. From 2008, Japanese auto-company Suzuki bought the naming rights for the competition, and the competition has been renamed to AFF Suzuki Cup.

Since it was inaugurated, the cup has been won three times by both Singapore and Thailand while Malaysia and Vietnam have won the cup once each. Indonesia has never won the competition but have been runner-up four times, more than any other team.

Malaysia were the defending champions, beaten Indonesia 4-2 on aggregate in 2010 final."

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Anyway, the 8 teams who finally will be playing in the 'finals' of the 2012 AFF Suzuki Cup will be:

Malaysia
Thailand
Indonesia
Singapore
Philippines
Vietnam
Myanmar
Laos

divided into Group A (games in Thailand) and Group B (games in Malaysia) in late November. The top 2 of the groups will play against each other in a two legged match, the winners will play in a two leg finals as well.

Out of curiosity I checked the current FIFA rankings of all the teams and in reverse order:

Timor Leste 206
Brunei Darussalam 203
Laos 193
Cambodia 189
Myanmar 184
Indonesia 170
Singapore 162
Malaysia 162
Philippines 142
Vietnam 140
Thailand 139

Brunei's position hopefully should move up with the AFF Suzuki Cup results taken into account. We currently have 5 points which came from our 2009 matches before the ban. That had a 20% weighting. The 2012 results would weigh more heavily and we will get more than 5 points hopefully real soon. Though Timor Leste would also move up but Cambodia might go down.

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