Four 'blind spots' on Thammasat Stadium

The most noticeable thing is Tien Linh's position as a striker in the rare time he was able to play as a starter for the national team. In his 8th time playing for the national team, the 21-year-old striker of B.Binh Duong was almost missing.

The worry of the striker

Tien Linh did not have any chances to push, press or create a wall with Quang Hai, Van Toan and his teammates next to him. The striker's ability to move without the ball was also not good, so he almost did not have any situations that posed a danger to the home team's goal.

When listing the Vietnamese national team, many “online coaches” talked a lot about Mr. Park’s selection of players, leaving out many talented players in the V.League. But looking at Tien Linh playing, we can see that although he is one of the top domestic strikers in the V.League, he is still young when it comes to the national team.

Tien Linh was missing throughout the first half. Photo: Trung Kien

When Anh Duc, playing for B.Binh Duong, was only a reserve player due to his age, we saw the void left by this veteran striker in the national team. Cong Phuong, who replaced Tien Linh, was not much better. It is difficult to use age as an excuse because the opposite side, Supachok, who is only 21 years old and plays with maturity for the second time in the Thai national team.

Having been in the national team for 4 years, goalkeeper Van Lam's 19th appearance was only considered to be average. The Thai players knew Van Lam well enough to play in Thai-League 1, they pressed him and the goalkeeper was twice flustered and kicked the ball out of bounds. Mr. Nishino's decision to play with a 4-1-2-1-2 formation, assigning Thitiphan and Supachok to put pressure on goalkeeper Van Lam was analyzed and calculated quite carefully.

If the corner-saving save when facing Supachok is a plus point, the mentality of this goalkeeper in both recent matches against the Thai national team has made the team's coaching staff have to consider. The Vietnam Football Federation (VFF) is said to be completing the final procedures to naturalize Filip Nguyen and compete with Van Lam.

Two conductors disappeared

Both Quang Hai and Chanathip failed to perform as expected. Photo: Trung Kien

Having to play quite a lot of matches since the beginning of the year (45 matches) has made this number 19 show signs of overload and boredom. The Thai midfielders had no difficulty neutralizing the conductor of the Vietnam team, causing us to only have 3 clear chances in the whole match. The connection between Quang Hai - Tien Linh - Van Toan is considered quite loose, the wing attacks of Hong Duy - Quang Hai are also not clear.

It is possible that the rain before the match at Thammasat Stadiummaking the pitch soft, slippery and causing some difficulty for this midfielder with a technical playing style. But clearly, Quang Hai's physical strength is having problems and he is out of breath in the race with the home team players.

On the home side, conductor Chanathip was the “blind spot”. Playing as an attacking midfielder, “Thai Messi” stayed quite far back to join the defense and Hung Dung did a good job of locking down the home team’s number 10. Chanathip still played with poise and full of tricks but had neither time nor space to adjust the ball, so he became a “bottleneck” in the Thai team’s attack.

Not to mention, there is a bit of idealism when both conductors Chanathip and Quang Hai have never scored against their rivals. Thai people are quite surprised, in 7 years playing for the Thai team, Chanathip has not been able to score in 5 matches against the Vietnamese team.