With injuries ruling out a number of his key defenders before and during the tournament, Uzbekistan coach Vadim Abramov was forced to field a makeshift backline that included players like Odil Akmedov, Stansislav Andreev and Victor Karpenko, who normally play in midfield.

While they did well enough in their first four games, conceding only four goals in total, their frailties were badly exposed in their semi-final against Australia when they suffered an embarrassing 6-0 defeat.

And the problems were apparent once again during the third place play-off against Korea Republic on Friday when they fell three goals behind in the first 40 minutes. But to their credit, the central Asian side battled back and were only narrowly beaten 3-2 at the end.

“We only really started to play well in the second half,” the central midfielder lamented. “In the first half, we made a lot of mistakes in defence and a couple of the Korean goals were down to our errors.

“Those mistakes are understandable if you consider that we were missing a lot of our first-choice defenders for this tournament and we had to rely on a make-shift defence.

“We managed to cope okay early in the tournament but our defensive problems were more apparent in the semi-finals and today because the Australians and the Korean have better quality than some of our other opponents,” the 25-year-old added.

“We must continue to work on our defence and try to show some improved performances when the World Cup qualifiers take place.”