On the eve of a crucial Asian Cup qualifier in Lebanon today, Thailand coach Winfried Schaefer showed signs he was feeling the pressure by blasting Thai reporters for negative headlines he has had to endure since the Asean Championship debacle.
The veteran trainer's future has been the subject of media speculation since his failure to help the Thais win the championship for the first time in more than a decade in December, after they went down to an agonising 3-2 aggregate defeat to Singapore in the final.
The speculation over Schaefer's future in the post he has held since 2011 became ever more intense after Thailand made the worst possible start to their qualifying campaign for the Asian Cup finals in Australia in two years' time with a 3-1 loss at home to Kuwait last month.
Football pundits forecast the 63-year-old German will lose his job should the Thai team fail to snatch one of two qualification spots, while some suggest his reign could end even sooner if his men suffer defeat to World Cup hopefuls Lebanon in Beirut.
Facing pressure on and off the field, Schaefer, who led Cameroon to the Africa Nations Cup title in 2002, yesterday went on the offensive against the media.
"It seems as if the media writes even more about me when I am not in Thailand. I experienced that in January, after the Suzuki Cup. I was in Germany and suddenly the media wrote a lot of very ugly and untrue stuff about my team and me.
"Now it has started again, I am not in Thailand and nearly every day some one calls me or writes to say that there is another strange story about me in the media. Sometimes [the story is] so totally confusing and senseless that it would be a waste of time to reply to it," said Schafer in a comment on his Facebook page.
Schaefer, though, reiterated that he still is fully committed to the job, as he wants to help Thailand achieve more success on the international stage.
"This behaviour hurts and it frustrated me, but it never changed and it will not change my mind. I want to be the national trainer of Thailand because I love the country more and more, because I am more and more touched by the support of the people, because I love to work with the team, and last but not least, because I am very, very confident that we can improve to a spectacular level and astonish Asia and the world with successful, exciting and simple, beautiful Thai football. That's it."
Back to matters on the pitch, Schaefer hailed the atmosphere inside the team after their training camp in Qatar ahead of the Lebanon fixture.
"We are now in Beirut, a nice city by the way, and we are in a very good mood. Of course we are missing seven injured players, but we did an intense and concentrated short training camp in Qatar and played a very good, a promising match [a warmup against Qatar that they lost 1-0] - please don't forget this team has never played in this combination before.
"Every single player is excited to be part of the national team and all of them want to show their very best for Thailand. That's exactly the mood, the atmosphere you need to enter such an important match.
"Lebanon is strong, still in the World Cup qualifiers, but … I am confident," said Schaefer, whose side are lying third in a group led by Iran, who thumped Lebanon 5-0.
NBT Channel will show the match live from 10.30pm.
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Article source: http://www.thethailandlinks.com/2013/03/22/schaefer-blasts-media-ahead-of-lebanon-match/
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