Vietnamese football needs an anchor
If viewed from the perspective of youth football, the failure of Vietnam U16 at the Southeast Asian U16 tournament is nothing to be upset about, even though they lost too heavily to Indonesia in the Bronze Medal match. But the feeling of disappointment is real and it is not beneficial for Vietnamese football at this time.
It can be said that the image and belief in Vietnamese football is like a ship out of control in a storm. If it is left to drift, the ship is at risk of breaking apart. It needs an anchor to keep everything in place, waiting for the storm to pass.
We also hoped that the U23 team would improve after coach Troussier left, but at the U23 Asian tournament, the team led by coach Hoang Anh Tuan also did not play successfully.
Hope is again for new coach Kim Sang Sik with 2 matches in the 2026 World Cup qualifiers, but the performance is still far from expected, when the coach from Korea has too little time.
Naturally, hope "drifted" back to the U teams, and as seen, the situation was not bright, if not to say that the feeling of pessimism had returned.
It can be said that the current situation is not different from the period of 2012 - 2013, when Vietnamese football was at its lowest point in all aspects. V-League witnessed a "transfer" to the bosses, the national team levels were defeated in the SEA Games and AFF Cup. In that very bad time, the U19 Vietnam team created a cool breeze with the generation of players from the Hoang Anh Gia Lai Arsenal JMG academy.
Their starting point was also at the U19 Southeast Asian Championship, although they also lost to Indonesia in the final, but the important thing was the passionate performance of the young players that changed everything. From just a breeze, they created waves of belief that kept beating, beating, rising.
We tend to look for quick wins to restore fans' faith, but the lesson from 2014 is that the anchor is not necessarily performance.
At the U19 International Four-Nation Tournament held in Ho Chi Minh City in 2015, the U19 team was also defeated by European opponents, but that did not affect the positive impact they created at that time.
The "U19 fever" is even bigger. At the extreme stage of confidence, sometimes just playing dedicated football is enough for fans.
Perhaps, that is exactly what Vietnamese football needs at this time. We are in a stage where it is difficult to advance, but extremely easy to decline. The process of preparing for the next generation is facing serious problems. To be fair, only the national team has the prospect of improving its performance when it still has players from the "golden generation", while the U teams are all stagnant. The match with Indonesia in the U16 tournament showed that our players are weaker in terms of physique, weak in competition and lacking in technique, not to mention tactical thinking. This situation is happening in both U19 and U23. If we want to change anything, it will definitely take a lot of time as well as new methods, including the coaching system for the youth teams.
Unfortunately, a U19 case will not be able to happen again. Simply put, the number of our youth football training centers has not increased, only decreased. A place specializing in training players to "play football" like Hoang Anh Gia Lai no longer exists, while our youth football tournament system has too few matches, which makes the growth process of young players more inclined towards "playing football" with the goal of achieving results than "playing football".
They have no space to find joy, and therefore there can be no joy for the fans.
Now, even if we don't want to, we can only hope in coach Kim Sang Sik./.
