The story of the 'huge' assistant team and the steps to reach new heights

Previously, Mr. Park Hang-seo also always used a "huge" assistant team of 15 people for 2 teams at the same time. Of course, they are all "domestic and foreign experts, who love their jobs and have the ability to contribute the most to the teams". The following story is about another direction that perhaps few people have been interested in, or at least expected...

Mr. P. Troussier has a team of 16 assistants. Photo: Archive

Let’s start with the “assistant” Park Hang-seo of the Head Coach of the Korean National Team at the 2002 World Cup, Mr. Guud Hiddink. At that time, Korean football invited this one of the most talented coaches in the world to lead the team when competing in the World Cup in Asia and brought this team to the semi-finals for the first time, then finished fourth. That is the highest ranking this advanced football country has ever achieved.

Mr. Park Hang-seo once confided about the teacher he once “apprenticeed” with: “He showed me what the life of a coach is like. The time I spent as an assistant was a very important time for me. I learned from him how to organize work, plan and handle situations. When working with him, I kept a daily diary. I recorded what he told me, how he worked. With that stored data, after becoming a coach, every time a situation occurred, I took out my diary to look at it. The diary was very valuable for me to refer to…”.

In particular, the sincere advice of Mr. Guud Hiddink when Mr. Park Hang-seo worked in Vietnam "...don't try to train any player because time never allows. You just try to make the most of the resources you have..." was thoroughly applied by the Korean coach and brought brilliant success in the past 5 years as everyone knows.

The second typical example is Pep Guardiola's "assistant" Arteta at the famous Manchester City team, who then "took over" Arsenal and is currently ahead of his coach's team in the 2022-2023 season on the Premier League table. It is known that when he became an assistant at the blue half of London team, Arteta was only responsible for connecting with new members, then gradually planning matches, making decisions while the ball was still rolling on the field, and even participating in the process of orienting the future development of the club.

The main thing is that Arteta has always shown the ability to learn from his predecessor, with "ambition, desire and passion for everything related to football and tactical calculations" as Xavi, another student of Pep, is successfully steering this season at Barcelona-Spain. Meanwhile, Company's student learns from Pep by taking notes of everything he learns from his playing days to apply later. That is "methods, processes, personality, psychology, tactical pieces and countless other things" as Pep Guardiola himself said. This teacher, as Company said, "always looks at each match in a different way to create his own style. Then from there, the team will find its own identity in the most suitable and best way"...

From there, we try to evaluate and relate to the process of inviting good foreign coaches to lead the national teams and the process of "contributing to the national teams" and clubs in Vietnam by the assistants that took place at that time as well as when they "lived separately", has it reached a level worth mentioning? Obviously, since the time of coaches Weigang, Dido, Riedl, Calistore, Miura, then Park Hang-seo and now P. Troussier, there have been many assistants who have quietly learned the experiences of their coaches and applied them to the assigned work, although the success achieved is still very modest compared to the requirements.

Hopefully, at least the great assistant team from the time of Mr. Park Hang-seo and now Mr. Troussier will learn from the example of "assistant" Park Hang-seo, "assistants" Arteta, Savi or Company to mature, be independent, rise up to take charge of their work, to rise from "student" to "teacher" when the opportunity and luck come.