AFF Cup 2018: Mr. Park deserves the title "Vietnam's Hiddink"

The other team wanted to use their youth and extremely tough style of play to pressure the visiting team Vietnam, but Mr. Park used veteran Anh Duc to break the siege. When Mr. Antoine Hey replaced 3 midfielders to push the attack up, the Korean coach reinforced his steel with Trong Hoang, Hung Dung and sent Van Toan in to cause trouble.

Control the game, not the ball

“I think Myanmar will attack the flanks a lot. However, the pair of wing midfielders' eagerness to attack also reveals a large gap behind them. If Vietnam plays a quick counter-attack and exploits these two gaps, they will face Myanmar's pair of central defenders, one old and one young, who sometimes do not coordinate well. If they take advantage of these weaknesses, I believe that Cong Phuong or Van Toan will score a goal. I have watched these two players play at ASIAD 2018” - Myanmar's top scorer Joseph Mpande, who is currently playing for Hai Phong, shared.

Vietnam team's starting lineup. Photo: Internet

Since arriving in Myanmar, Mr. Antoine Hey (Head Coach of Myanmar National Team) has built a 4-1-4-1 tactical formation. When attacking, the two wingers will move up to play as strikers. With the support of Aung Thu behind striker Aung Than Htet, a 4-3-3 formation is created. Most of the Myanmar players grew up in the same generation, they are very young and are in the national U21 and U23 teams, so they play football together, smoothly and understand each other very well.

Meanwhile, Mr. Park Hang-seo continued to surprise when there was only 1 change in personnel when Van Quyet returned to the field, Trong Hoang played as a reserve. Thus, the Vietnamese team still played with a 3-4-3 formation but Van Duc switched to replace Trong Hoang on the left wing.

The fact that left-back T.Thein (3) had to sit out the match due to receiving two yellow cards made Mr. Park make that decision. If he had been lucky, Van Duc would have scored when his shot hit the post of goalkeeper Kyaw Zin Htet.

Use softness to overcome hardness

Mr. Antoine Hey has studied the Vietnamese team quite carefully and decided to make 5 changes compared to the previous match and chose an extremely tough style of play to limit our technical play. The number of fouls committed by the home team was almost double that of Vietnam (10 times) and only received 2 yellow cards because the referee was lenient. Many times in the match Anh Duc, Quang Hai, Cong Phuong were on the ground because of malicious collisions by the home team players.

Myanmar players like to control the ball, they play with a dominating style of play, thanks to their understanding of each other, controlling 53% of the time. Meanwhile, the Vietnamese team under Park Hang-seo focuses more on controlling the game than controlling the ball.

Van Duc (white shirt) had a great match. Photo: AFF

Watching them play on Thuwunna field, it feels like they are at a disadvantage, but in fact, they are very safe, Que Ngoc Hai and his teammates are completely proactive. That is the interesting difference between the two teams, it has been a long time since Vietnamese audiences have had this feeling.

The player that Mr. Park Hang-seo and the Vietnamese team are most interested in is Aung Thu. This player has won the title of "Best Player of the Tournament" of the Myanmar Nation League (the national championship of the land of temples) three times in a row from 2015 to 2017.

AboveTransfermarkt, his transfer value was up to 315,000 pounds, a not small amount for a Southeast Asian player. But Que Ngoc Hai was alert to restrain this player, not allowing Aung Thu to approach Van Lam's goal.

Our biggest hope is Van Quyet, the player who has scored a total of 5 goals against Myanmar teams including: 1 goal against U19 team, 1 goal against U22 team, 1 goal against U23 team and 2 goals against Myanmar national team, more than any other player of Vietnam national team. But this captain played poorly and was replaced by Trong Hoang after the break.

To increase the steel quality, Mr. Park also brought in Hung Dung to replace Xuan Truong and in the last 15 minutes, Van Toan, a nemesis of Myanmar football, came on to replace Cong Phuong. After 2 excellent matches, the Do Luong player's physical strength was down, lacking the necessary stretching power. In the second half, while Vietnam completely switched to a 4-4-2 formation with 2 strikers Anh Duc and Van Toan, the home side brought in Yan Naing Oo, Ye Ko Oo, Than Htet Aung to change to a 4-3-3 attacking formation.

Coach Antoine Hey did not want the match to end in a draw because he would be at a disadvantage when facing host Malaysia in the next round, but the mobility of the Vietnamese midfield made the Myanmar players push up.

There were many situations where players Anh Duc, Van Duc, and Trong Hoang approached the opponent's 16.5m box. Van Toan even kicked the ball into the net of goalkeeper Kyaw Zin Htet but the referee did not recognize the goal because the offside situation was unclear.

After 3 matches, we have not conceded a goal, have 7 points and continue to stand in 2nd place in group A and have a 90% chance of reaching the semi-finals because we only have to meet Cambodia at My Dinh Stadium. The two teams Malaysia and Myanmar will compete for the remaining ticket.