Searching for the "king without a throne" at V.League 2019
(Baonghean.vn) - It seemed like "losing all of their youth to the relegation battle" but in the end, HAGL owns two "uncrowned kings" in V.League 2019. Finishing in 8th place, HAGL also has "assist king" Van Toan and "domestic top scorer" Minh Vuong.
In fact, before round 25, HAGL was still in the same situation as previous seasons, "losing their youth to the relegation battle" as a player from the Mountain City lamented on Facebook. There was a period when they had 7 consecutive matches without a win (4 losses, 3 draws) and were on the brink of relegation.
Although Ho Chi Minh City had put aside many key players to save energy for the National Cup semi-finals, they still had to rely on two penalties "respectfully" given by center back Huu Tuan to escape the spiral. Surprisingly, neither the coaching staff nor the home team players reacted to the referee's whistle in these 50/50 situations.
King of assists
After 3 consecutive wins, assured of staying in the league, Van Toan, Minh Vuong and his teammates "sunk" S.Khanh Hoa on the Highlands, ending an impressive season with HAGL Club. With 1 goal, contributing 1 assist to help the mountain town team beat Khanh Hoa Club with a score of 4-1, the player from Hai Duong has had 9 goals and 11 assists.
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| Van Toan. Photo courtesy of Xuan Thuy |
Van Toan's goals are all important and especially very technical, full of speed and the spirit of a great player. This season, Van Toan has done well in all 3 tasks: scoring, assisting and harassing at a much higher level, especially solving the speed problem well in counter-attack situations.
In V.League 2019, Van Toan is only behind striker Pape Omar of the defending champion Hanoi, who has 15 goals and 8 assists. But he is far ahead of the Vietnamese players behind him such as Quang Hai (17 times) and Van Quyet (16 times) - both of Hanoi Club.
An undeniable fact is that players Pape Omar, Quang Hai, Van Quyet are playing in the capital team with too many excellent supporting faces, far different from Van Toan, who sometimes has to retreat deep into the home field to find the ball. It is not an exaggeration to say that in V.League 2019 this season, no one stands out more than Van Toan.
Domestic top scorer
Minh Vuong shone brightly in round 26 of V-League 2019 at Pleiku Stadium. He scored a double against Khanh Hoa to help HAGL, and also had a pass to create a goal for his teammate Van Toan in a 4-1 victory, thereby helping the team from the mountain town finish the season in 8th place on the rankings.
This midfielder has 12 goals in V-League 2019. He became the domestic striker who scored the most goals in this tournament. Last season, Tien Linh (Binh Duong) was the domestic “Top scorer”.
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| Minh Vuong scored 12 goals for HAGL this season. Photo courtesy of Quang Thinh. |
In general, Minh Vuong and Pedro (Sai Gon) with 12 goals only ranked 4th in the list of V.League 2019 strikers. The title of “Top scorer” belonged to Pape Omar of Hanoi FC and Bruno Cunha Catanhede of Viettel (both with 15 goals). The person with the 3rd best scoring record was Hoang Vu Samson (Quang Nam) with 13 goals.
There is a rather ironic thing, possessing 2 "kings", 2 best domestic strikers of V.League 2019, this season HAGL has scored up to 45 goals, only behind the champion Hanoi (60 goals) but the team from the mountain town is only in 8th place.
Simply put, Mr. Duc's football philosophy is "attack is the best defense", HAGL advocates using offense to compensate for defense so Tuan Anh, Van Toan, Minh Vuong always "lose their youth in the relegation battle". Completely different from SLNA!
