Does Vietnamese football have good strikers to 'hunt' for SEA Games gold?

The biggest difficulty for the Vietnam team right now is the lack of a true goalscorer. For the Vietnam U23 team before the SEA Games, that difficulty is even greater.

The lack of a center forward is the biggest problem of the current Vietnamese national teams. The team is so short of players that in the recent Asian Cup 2019 qualifying matches, coach Nguyen Huu Thang had to use Cong Phuong for this position.

Also through 2 matches, Cong Phuong showed that he is not the right person to play as a center forward, not the right person to play the role of the team's main striker. Because simply, Cong Phuong is not the type of striker who scores goals.

Compared to the Vietnam national team, finding a striker for the Vietnam U23 team to prepare for the SEA Games in August is even more difficult. If in the national team, coach Nguyen Huu Thang still has options like Anh Duc (B.Binh Duong), or Ha Minh Tuan (SHB Da Nang), but Mr. Thang rarely chooses them, then in the U23 team, finding a striker is quite difficult.

U23 Vietnam needs good goalscorers at SEA Games 29 (photo: Trong Vu)

Coach Nguyen Huu Thang once had high hopes for Ha Duc Chinh. However, the player of the Vietnam U20 team and SHB Da Nang club is seriously injured and it is not known whether he will recover in time to play in the SEA Games.

Another option is Van Toan (HA Gia Lai), but Van Toan has recently shown that he is more suitable for the role of winger than striker when playing for the national teams.

Compared to Cong Phuong, Van Toan is faster and moves more intelligently without the ball. But Van Toan also has the same weakness as Cong Phuong, which is his small body, not enough to put pressure and sweep past the opponent's defense.

How hard Cong Phuong and Van Toan struggled to find a way to score goals when they combined together is something many people have seen from the V-League, when these two players combined on the attack line of HA Gia Lai (Van Toan alone has not scored any goals after the first leg).

Perhaps it is time for coach Nguyen Huu Thang to expand the selection and search for strikers for the Vietnam U23 team, paying more attention to other youth teams, or other young faces playing at clubs, instead of just relying on the finishing ability of HA Gia Lai players, especially Cong Phuong who is sometimes bright, sometimes dim.

Without finding a truly "sharp" striker, without finding an effective striker in converting opportunities into goals, the goal of "hunting" for gold for the U23 Vietnam team in Malaysia this coming August will not be easy to achieve./.

According to Dantri