KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia’s Luqman Hakim Shamsudin finished joint top scorer in the AFC Under-16 Championships, won by Japan on Sunday.
The Malaysian shared the award with Japan’s Shoji Toyama and Australia’s Noah Botic who all scored five goals each.
His success is a huge consolation for Malaysia following the team’s failure to go beyond the group stage.
Luqman is also the first Malaysian to win the tournament’s top scorer award.
“I am very proud to have won the award with two other players. It is huge individual recognition and I hope to do better in the future,” said the striker.
Japan won the tournament following 1-0 win over Tajikistan thanks to Jun Nishikawa’s 63rd-minute strike. Nishikawa was also named the tournament’s most valuable player.
Coach Yoshiro Moriyama hailed his Japan side for the win.
“My expectations before the tournament were that it was going to be a difficult tournament, and that our players had to improve game by game,” Moriyama told www.the-afc.com.
“And they did well to grow and improve throughout the tournament. We overcame whatever difficulties thrown at us and got the trophy.”
“Tajikistan is one of the most improved teams in the tournament.
“When we first met them in the second match in the group stage, we struggled to find the back of the net because they had such a good defence but since then, they’ve improved offensively as well.
Their strikers have really good pace, and individually, they were a threat as well. In the end, the two most improved teams met in the final.”
Japan, Tajikistan, South Korea and Australia will represent Asia in next year’s Under-17 World Cup in Peru.