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KUALA NERUS: An excellent performance in the second half was the key to Malaysia’s 10-0 victory over Papua New Guinea in a Tier 1 international friendly at the Sultan Mizan Zainal Abidin Stadium here tonight.
Sensational young winger Arif Aiman Mohd Hanapi and naturalised player Paulo Josue stole the show\u00a0with four and three goals respectively to mesmerise the 9,592 spectators present.
Kim Pan Gon\u2019s men scored nine goals in the second half after taking the lead at the end of the first period through Muhammad Safawi Rasid’s penalty following a foul on Muhammad Akhyar Abdul Rashid.
The national team\u2019s goal fest could have begun much earlier in the game, but\u00a0with a series of golden opportunities\u00a0missed in the first half,\u00a0Pan Gon made several changes including bringing on\u00a0Arif Aiman and Mohamad Faisal Abdul Halim.
The second-half blitz started in the 52nd minute,\u00a0with Josue showing good ball control when receiving Muhammad Azam Azmi Murad’s pass before calmly firing a shot past goalkeeper Ronald Warisan.
Five minutes later, Arif Aiman scored the national team’s third goal after successfully beating the offside trap to meet Nooa Laine’s beautiful pass, while Mohamad Faisal made it 4-0 two minutes later.
Arif Aiman got his second goal in the 60th minute after finishing off Mohamad Faisal’s pass in the penalty box, followed by Josue’s second goal four minutes later, adding\u00a0pressure on the visitors led by Harrison Kamake.
The first hat-trick of the match was recorded by\u00a0Josue when he scored Malaysia\u2019s seventh goal\u00a0in the 70th minute before the eighth goal came through Daniel Ting\u00a0six minutes later.
Malaysia added to Papua New Guinea\u2019s misery when Arif Aiman got his hat-trick in the 87th minute before he\u00a0capped an excellent night with his fourth personal goal just a minute before full-time.
The success saw the national team record their fourth victory over Papua New Guinea in\u00a0five meetings, while it was also their fourth consecutive friendly win\u00a0since March.
It was also Malaysia’s biggest win since beating Bhutan 7-0 in a friendly in April 2018.
For the record, only five players –\u00a0Shahrul Mohd Saad, Stuart Wilkin, Josue, Corbin-Ong and Endrick Dos Santos – were retained by Pan Gon from the squad that defeated the Solomon Islands 4-1 in another friendly here last Wednesday, with goalkeeper Sikh\u00a0Izhan Nazrel Sikh Azman making\u00a0his senior team debut.
— BERNAMA<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
KUALA NERUS: An excellent performance in the second half was the key to Malaysia’s 10-0 victory over Papua New Guinea in a Tier 1 international friendly at the Sultan Mizan Zainal Abidin Stadium here tonight.Sensational young winger Arif Aiman Mohd Hanapi and naturalised player Paulo Josue stole the show\u00a0with four and three goals respectively to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":21303,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-21302","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-local-news"},"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jesseltontimes.com\/wpmarch2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21302","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jesseltontimes.com\/wpmarch2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jesseltontimes.com\/wpmarch2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jesseltontimes.com\/wpmarch2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jesseltontimes.com\/wpmarch2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21302"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jesseltontimes.com\/wpmarch2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21302\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21304,"href":"https:\/\/jesseltontimes.com\/wpmarch2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21302\/revisions\/21304"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jesseltontimes.com\/wpmarch2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21303"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jesseltontimes.com\/wpmarch2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21302"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jesseltontimes.com\/wpmarch2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21302"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jesseltontimes.com\/wpmarch2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21302"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}