As reported earlier this week, the Thai National Team’s hopes of making it through to the final group stage of 2014 World Cup Qualifying suffered hammer blows in the past seven days as they lost 3-0 to Saudi Arabia last Fridayand were then unlucky to go down 1-0 to Australia on Tuesday. However, there is still a possible path through to the final stage for Schaefer’s men, and they did at least put up a decent fight in both games. That’s more than can be said for the under-23 side at the SEA Games in Indonesia. The Thais have traditionally dominated the football competition at the SEA Games over the years until 2009 when they were dumped out at the group stage in Laos. That failure shocked local football fans and could surely never happen again. But here we are in the very next Games and lightning has indeed struck twice. Feeble performances by the Thais saw them losing three and winning just one of their four group games and that win came against no-hopers Cambodia. The three defeats came against bitter regional rivals Malaysia (1-2), Indonesia (1-3) and Singapore (0-2). Embarrassingly, the Thais were already eliminated before that final game against Singapore and with only pride to play for managed to put in their worst performance of the tournament. Back to the drawing board for the under-23s at least.