By Susil Premalal

Sri Lanka suffered a demoralising 0-2 defeat at the hands of Myanmar in their FIFA International Friendly football encounter played at the Thuwunna Youth Training Centre Stadium in Yangon, Myanmar yesterday. 

This is the first of the two-match friendly series between Myanmar and Sri Lanka with the second fixture scheduled for October 13 at the same venue. 

The home side took a close 1-0 lead at half time and they consolidated their position by adding the second goal later in the second half.   

However, the exchanges were even initially before Myanmar drew first blood in the 16th minute with a superb effort from Lwin Moe Aung, who exploited Sri Lanka’s lethargic defensive play to put his side in front. 

Until then, the Sri Lankan defence looked quite solid with Harsha Fernando, Chalana Chameera, Mohamed Hasmeer and Wade Dekker putting up a good performance. 

After the turnaround, Sri Lanka made a determined effort to equalise with Adhavan Rajamohan, Barath Suresh, Jude Supan and Leon Perera providing some anxious moments to their opponents.           

But, Myanmar performed extremely well to frustrate the visitors with their clever defensive tactics and they eventually sealed the contest with a second goal in the 53rd minute of play.    

Sri Lanka, in a desperate attempt to foil their opponents, conceded a free-kick and Maung Maung Lwin made no mistake with the kick to make it 2-0. 

Sri Lanka are currently placed 200th in the FIFA Rankings and are making a determined effort to reach the 199th place after this friendly series. In contrast, Myanmar are currently placed 167th in the FIFA Rankings and the two teams were facing each other after a lapse of 14 years.

Sri Lanka have never beaten Myanmar in their previous encounters while going down 1-3 and 0-4 in their Asian Football Confederation Cup matches in 2008 and 2010 respectively.