HANOI: The scoreline showed that Vietnam were the better side by three goals against Malaysia.
But national defender Dominic Tan who battled Vietnam in a Group B AFF Cup match in Hanoi on Tuesday, will not agree with such conclusion.
In fact he and his teammates felt hard done by the match officials.
Though they lost 3-0 to Vietnam at the My Dinh Stadium, the team's general feeling was that poor match officiating became a key factor in deciding the outcome of the game.
Japanese referee Ryuji Sato was inconsistent in his calls, and looked to have got two big decisions wrong.
Vietnam's Nguyen Van Toan was really unlucky to get a second yellow card for what seemed like very little contact with Dominic.
At the other end, Malaysia's Azam Azmi Murad deserved to get a red card for retaliation.
But the Malaysian team, rightly, felt aggrieved when Vietnamese Doan Van Hau's aggressive push wasn't punished, and instead a penalty was awarded against Dominic's team.
Van Hau was also at the centre of two other incidents: making a forceful barge on Azam inside Vietnam's penalty box and seeming to have swung his arm at Sharul Nazeem. But Sato didn't see anything wrong.
This made it a hard one for the Malaysian players to take.
"Of course I am disappointed. The scoreline didn't depict how we played. Credit to the boys," said Dominic.