AFC 'dissects' Coach Park's 3-defender tactic
(Baonghean.vn) - Mr. Choi Seung-bum - Analyst of the AFC Technical Subcommittee after the AFC U23 Championship in January 2020 recently "dissected" the shortcomings of the 3-defender tactic that Coach Park is applying.
At the 2020 AFC U23 Championship, the runner-up U23 Vietnam suffered a heavy defeat and left the tournament right after the group stage, which made the AFC Technical Subcommittee pay attention and conduct in-depth professional analysis. The trend of 3 defenders is losing ground, especially when U23 Vietnam has been identified and neutralized quite easily by the opponent.
Trend
On the AFC homepage, expert Choi Seung-bum said that the world football trend that continues to flourish among teams is the 3-man central defender formation. If in the 2016 AFC U23 Championship, all teams played with a 4-man defense, then in the 2018 AFC U23 Championship, 4 teams chose the 3-man central defender formation. In the tournament in Thailand, this number increased to 5 with North Korea, Japan, Jordan, Qatar and Vietnam. But surprisingly, all 4 of these teams were eliminated after the group stage.
"We found that the three-man midfield formation will help teams exploit the width of the field well. But the quality of the two full-backs is the key point because if they lose strength, they will leave a huge gap for the opponent to exploit," Choi Seung-bum pointed out.
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| Mr. Park is missing Van Duc. Photo: FBNV |
Those are the disadvantages of playing with 3-4-3 or 3-5-2 formations that Mr. Park himself discovered. When there were no wingers with good physical strength and quality like Trong Hoang and Van Hau, the gaps of U23 Vietnam were easily exploited by the opponent. The most obvious was the match where U23 North Korea "rotated" the U23 Vietnam midfielders by dropping the ball into the gaps behind the midfielders.
Without a true striker, without wingers with exceptional speed like Van Duc, or stubborn in tracking like Xuan Manh, both the U23 and the national team are facing difficulties. Even the U23 Japan and Qatar with better quality players but losing in specific situations still had to say goodbye to the tournament, something they rarely do when playing with 4 defenders.
And in fact
Compared to the Vietnamese team, the ability to fight of the U23 Vietnam players is problematic. The physique, physical strength and combat experience of the young players do not allow them to surround and follow the opponent to the end. When the distance between the players is not guaranteed, it is obvious that they are exploited by the opponent players.
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It is time for Mr. Park and his colleagues to renew the playing style of the U23 and the Vietnamese national team with new people and new ways of operating. Photo: VPF |
"From a perfection perspective, we emphasize the importance of one-on-one defensive training with center-backs. This also leads to another consequence: playing with three center-backs will give a big advantage to the opponent's small, skillful attackers," said expert Choi Seung-bum.
It is time for Mr. Park and his colleagues to renew the playing style of the U23 and the Vietnam national team with new people and new ways of operating. That is what the AFC Technical Subcommittee has warned.
