AFC Women's Asian Cup
Head coach Joel Cornelli was delighted with the win but at the same time, saw areas for improvement ahead of their match against hosts Tajikistan on Wednesday.
“Even though Palestine are ranked lower than us, we anticipated this to be a difficult game,” said Cornelli.
“We saw their win against Saudi Arabia and they have strong players so we needed to take care of these players in this game and we managed to show good defensive organisation.
“Our style is that we like to press, so sometimes we leave some spaces behind and we need to work on that. But in general, we deserved to win and I’m very happy with the performance of the team.”
A key factor for Malaysia’s triumph was the performance of goalkeeper Nurul Azurin Mazlan who made several important saves to keep Palestine at bay, with the highlights being denying Dima Alrumhi from the penalty spot in the first half and winning a one-on-one situation against Nour Youssef in the second half.
The 25-year-old, who plays her club football in Albania with KFF Vllaznia, praised the ability to switch gears with Malaysia sealing the points through Farahiyah Ridzuan’s goal late in the second half.
“Very thankful that we managed to get the three points,” said Nurul Azurin. “We didn’t start well in the first half but we were able to raise our game in the second half.
“We started to play how we want and got the goal, hopefully this can be a motivation for the players in the coming games.”
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