"Vietnam futsal team wants to continue to shock at the World Cup"

Vietnam futsal team coach Bruno Formoso shared this in an interview posted on FIFA's official website (FIFA.com) on March 8.

Vietnamese players carry coach Bruno Formoso to celebrate winning a ticket to the 2016 World Cup. Photo: Quang Thang

This interview was conducted by FIFA on the occasion of the Vietnam futsal team winning a ticket to the 2016 World Cup in Colombia (from September 10 to October 1) thanks to their achievement of reaching the semi-finals of the 2016 Asian Futsal Championship held last month in Uzbekistan. In it, Coach Bruno Formoso shared the difficulties during his time leading the Vietnam futsal team, his feelings when he and the Vietnam futsal team won a ticket to the 2016 World Cup and his hopes for the future of Vietnam futsal.

“The 2016 World Cup ticket is like a dream come true for Vietnamese football fans. For them, it is more than a fairy tale. It is a momentous event. I hope and believe that qualifying for the World Cup will have a positive impact on the long-term development of futsal in Vietnam,” FIFA website quoted Bruno Formoso as saying.

"We will continue to maintain our style of play at the 2016 World Cup and the spirit of never surrendering to our opponents," added Bruno Formoso.

Sharing about the days leading the Vietnamese futsal team, Mr. Bruno Formoso called it “the most difficult job in his career”. The Spanish coach explained: “When I accepted to lead the Vietnamese futsal team, there was no professional futsal tournament here. In Vietnam, there were also very few futsal players but there were not enough tournaments for them to compete. The players also had a different mentality compared to what I had known. They thought and worked in very different ways. Futsal had not developed in Vietnam as well as in neighboring countries”.

However, Mr. Bruno Formoso has applied what he learned in 12 years as a coach of futsal teams in Spain to completely change the face of the Vietnamese futsal team. He said: “During my time coaching the Vietnamese futsal team, I want the players to work responsibly, honestly and professionally. These are important factors in coaching that I learned in Spain. During this time, I have tried to maintain my mindset and coaching methods to change the team.”

Interview with coach Bruno Formoso on FIFA.com. Photo: screenshot

Commenting on the future and development strategy of Vietnamese futsal in the coming years after the World Cup ticket, Mr. Bruno Formoso emphasized youth training and focused on building a professional national championship tournament.

Mr. Formoso added: “It is important that we ensure that futsal in Vietnam has steady progress. We need to improve the training system and promote the development of domestic tournaments. Vietnam should make futsal a compulsory subject in schools and establish youth tournaments. The newly established national futsal championship will enter its second season and I hope that in the future they will have foreign coaches and players. From there, Vietnam can gradually improve the level of the national championship and get closer to the level of the best tournaments in Asia such as Iran, Japan, Thailand…."

According to Tuoitre