By David Gold
March 20 – Papua New Guinea, Fiji and Vanuatu are all through to the semi-finals of the Oceania men’s football qualifiers for London 2012, but hosts New Zealand are yet to seal their last four spot.
Papua New Guinea lost to the hosts New Zealand in the opening Group B match in Taupo at the Owen Delany Park, but beat Tonga 3-0 to secure their semi-final place.
Tonga face New Zealand in the final group game, with the hosts set to seal their semi-final spot if they avoid a two goal defeat, otherwise their opponents will progress.
In Group A Vanuatu progressed to the last four in style after thrashing American Samoa 8-0, before a narrow 1-0 win over the Solomon Islands.
Fiji beat the Solomon Islands 2-0 and then crushed American Samoa 7-1, meaning that they will play Vanuatu for top spot in the group in their final match.
Despite having made it to the last four, the three coaches who will now be hoping to reach the final and the chance to compete at London 2012 were not satisfied with their team’s respective performances.
“It’s a great feeling for us,” Vanuatu coach Richard Iwai said.
“I thought we could have done more today but having only one day of rest between the games is hard and maybe the pressure got to the players as well.
“We try to rush sometimes in front of goal instead of keeping cool and that’s what we need to correct.”
Meanwhile, Frank Farina, the former Australia manager and now Papua New Guinea coach, said after they beat Tonga: “We were very sloppy.”
“We got the win which was the most important thing but I thought our finishing was very poor.
“It was still a comfortable win but it was very frustrating.
“We weren’t at our best at all and, on today’s performance, everything needs to improve.
“It wasn’t just the finishing, our ball possession also wasn’t good enough.”
Having thrashed American Samoa, Fiji coach Imdad Ali said: “I’m not that happy with the way we played even though we scored goals.
“When you play in matches like this everyone wants to score and they forget about playing football.
“That’s often what happens when you are expected to score lots of goals.”
The two semi-final winners will go into the final on Saturday, where the victor will take the one spot available for Oceania at the Olympics.
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