Morais laments poor finishing for defeat to KL

Bad weather meant that the match was played over two days, the first 56 minutes on Saturday and the remaining 34 minutes on Sunday. Despite a break and time to rethink in between, Kuala Lumpur were the one that came out on top against reigning Super League champions, JDT.

Paulo Josue's goal in the first half played on Saturday turned out to be the deciding factor as JDT heaved and puffed on Sunday but failed to find the breakthrough to Kamarul Effandi's goal. 

Hariss Harun, Safawi Rasid, Luciano Figueroa and Ignacio 'Natxo' Insa all had chances to score to bring the Southern Tigers back into contention but found that they left their shooting boots back home. Kamarul was also in his element throughout the game to continually frustrate JDT.

Head coach of JDT, Morais was left disappointed in the way that his team failed to make full use of the control they had on the match and was left scratching his head, just how JDT did not manage to find the back of the net.

"First, we want to congratulate KL for the victory. Yesterday [Saturday] when we start this game, we had all the control in the game. We created a lot of chances to score. We gave them a few chances and they got it just before half time. Today [Sunday] also we controlled the game. We had opportunities to score but didn't capitalise on it." 

"For us, when we create so many chances, we score one or two goals. But this game we didn't with the chance we had. It's not an excuse, we can only blame ourselves for not converting the chances. The difference is down to that while KL were more clinical in their finishing.

"A big club like JDT, we don't program our players to lose any game but sometimes it happens. But we know that if we continue to play that way and continue to create chances, we're going to win more matches than lose," said Morais after the match.

The restart of the match on Sunday also saw substitute Adam Nor Azlin taken off just a minute into the match with Safawi coming on in his stead. Morais pointed out that there were no problems with Adam's fitness and it was merely a tactical reason to introduce Safawi.

"Marcos [Antonio] felt a little pain and we had to take care of him, so we took him off yesterday. The change with Adam for Safawi was a strategic idea because we were down by a goal that time. We needed to take some risk and that's the reason why," explained Morais.

While the other teams take a two weeks break, JDT have a chance to mend their wounds immediately, when they take on Persija Jakarta in the opening match of their 2018 AFC Cup campaign on Wednesday.