Chinese Taipei vs Thailand

Kaohsiung National Stadium is the venue as Chinese Taipei and Thailand face each other in an international friendly.

Chinese Taipei’s first outing in 2023 pits them against a Thailand side, whom they defeated 1-0 in their only friendly fixture in 2022, arresting a horrific ten-game losing streak in the process. That also was their first clean sheet since a 2-0 win over Hong Kong in June 2019, but manager Gary White has yet to address his side’s scoring problems. Indeed, his men have netted under 1.5 goals in their last 12 internationals, failing to score before halftime in the most recent eight. It’s also worth noting that before the abovementioned friendly triumph, Chinese Taipei had lost both previous meetings with Thailand by a two-goal margin. Therefore, their hopes of landing a first win as nominal host since November 2018 look rather far-fetched (D1, L7 since).

In the meantime, Thailand won’t be making this trip in high spirits after back-to-back two-goal margin defeats to the United Arab Emirates and Syria in March overshadowed their 2022 AFF Championship triumph at the turn of the year. Defensive resilience hasn’t been Thailand’s strong suit of late by any stretch of the imagination, with the ‘War Elephants’ conceding multiple goals in three of their last four matches. Manager Alexandre Polking has another concern on his plate after overseeing three consecutive games in which his men have bagged one goal or fewer. If that’s not enough to make him uncomfortable, Thailand are winless in their last five outings on foreign soil (D2, L3).