Indonesia were forced into extra time but ultimately prevailed against Myanmar while Vietnam strolled to an easy win over Cambodia in the semifinals.
Two-time gold medalist Indonesia will play a Vietnam side chasing their first ever gold in the Southeast Asian Games football event in Tuesday’s final.
But Indonesia were given a great big scare by a Myanmar side after both teams were tied 2-2 in normal time. After a scoreless first half, the goals rained in in the second half. Evan Dimas struck the opening the goal in the 58th minute and the Young Garudas doubled their lead through Egy Maulana in the 71st minute.
Then Velizar Popov’s side staged an incredible comeback and were back on level pegging within a space of two minutes. Aung Kaung Mann halved the deficit in the 79th minute before Win Naing Tun sent the match into extra time just a minute later.
Indra Sjafri’s boys managed to recover from that knock when Osvaldo Hay (102′) and Dimas (113′) scored the all-important goals to secure a 4-2 win and sent Myanmar packing out of the competition.
Meanwhile in the other semi-final played on Saturday, Vietnam confirmed their superiority over suprise package Cambodia with a comprehensive 4-0 win. Cambodia who had advanced to the semi-final at the expense of Malaysia, found the Golden Dragons just too hot for them to handle.
Nguyen Tien Linh opened the scoring in the 20th minute before further it turned into a Ha Duc Chinh show as the latter served up a hattrick much to the delight of Park Hang-seo. This is the first time that Vietnam has reached the gold medal match since the 2009 edition where they lost to Malaysia in the final.
Indonesia and Vietnam had already played each other once in the competition as both came from Group B with the Vietnamese winning that first encounter 2-1.
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