Vietnam National Team and the defense - counterattack launch pad

It's normal in football, especially when the gap between two matches is long.teamlasted for a whole month.

Coach Park Hang-seo must carefully calculate the personnel problem. Photo courtesy of Hai Hoang

However, if you look closely, there are also things that are not… normal (?) when the number of players called is too large (nearly 40 players), there are names that are only good in V. League, come to the training camp and then leave early (like Dinh Kha), there are people who have not been called up for a long time (like Nguyen Manh) and there are even people who were called up last time but were not kept, now they are called up again when the training camp time is not much (Xuan Manh for example)…

Looking at the list of players called up, it can be seen that Mr. Park Hang-seo added players from the goalkeeper (Nguyen Manh), defenders and midfielders (Thanh Thinh, Xuan Manh, Lieu Quang Vinh, Dang Van Toi...), strikers (Manh Dung, Xuan Tu...) and it seems that the Korean coach called up many players from U22 Vietnam to aim for a more distant future, rather than aiming for specific results in this difficult 3rd qualifying round campaign?

Surely the coaching staff and the players know which are the key matches for the Vietnam national team and obviously, Mr. Park Hang-seo will be very careful when deploying troops and arranging the match to achieve the best possible result. Previously, Mr. Park Hang-seo only sent young players Thanh Binh and Tan Tai onto the field for a short time in the match against Australia at My Dinh Stadium. The possibility that the two names mentioned above and the newly called names, and if they can stay on the final list, will be able to play more or less time in the upcoming matches is still open, if not very unlikely.

However, there may still be other opportunities for players who have been experienced in V. League and have eaten the national team's rice like Thanh Thinh or Xuan Manh? First of all, because never before has the defense of the Vietnam national team fluctuated as much as it does now due to injuries and penalty cards, because of ups and downs in performance in recent matches.

The biggest concern of Mr. Park Hang-seo is the "wings" - the wingback pair. Although Trong Hoang plays diligently and effectively, he still has certain weaknesses on the right wing, and on the left wing, Van Thanh and Hong Duy have been deployed in turn, but the team's losses still come from there.

It is no coincidence that Thanh Thinh and Xuan Manh were recalled after being sent back last time. There are many different speculations about the roles of these two players, but looking at how Mr. Park used them before and how they often played in Da Nang and SLNA, it is not difficult to guess where they will be "plugged" if they can stay. Both can play as defenders and midfielders, Thanh Thinh is strong on the left and Xuan Manh is pure on the right. Xuan Manh was even pulled in by Mr. Park to play as a center back during the U23 period in Changzhou.

Xuan Manh is as tough and good at sticking to Trong Hoang, if he is in sync, he can climb the border, cross the wing to create assists from the right wing as usual, which is something that Mr. Park already knows and hopes will happen again in this training session. Therefore, if you think that Xuan Manh will be assigned to the left wing, it will be very difficult for him, simply because it is a bad match, not to mention that this side has Thinh who has just "accompanying" the national team and his talent and performance seem to be on par with each other?

Because they were called up late, Thanh Thinh and Xuan Manh did not have much time compared to their other teammates. The problem now is the Korean coach's trust in his favorite student from Thuong Chau and his performance afterwards, especially the recovery process, regaining form after a long injury and after having to temporarily "say goodbye" last time.

The pressure to renew the team is not really big because the upcoming matches against China or Oman will be the first or the first time after a long time and many changes are difficult to grasp. The most important thing is still the "peak" of form of the key players, plus quality replacement from young players when the opportunity arises.

As seen, the fact that Mr. Park Hang-seo did not call up any teammates of Xuan Truong and Tuan Anh from HAGL, but added many teammates of Ngoc Hai and Tien Dung from Viettel, shows that he believes in the stable players and their rising teammates such as Thanh Binh and Hoang Duc, to keep and call up Van Thiet and Trong Dai in turn to create a familiar and most sustainable "connection line" when entering the battle.

Those are mandatory calculations, which cannot be changed after at least 3 defeats against big opponents, so that Mr. Park Hang-seo and his team really know where they are, what they need most at this time in terms of technique, tactics, and reinforcements. In which, the most important and urgent is the force for the defense front from near to far, to create a support and launching pad for counter-attack and raid calculations to gain and maintain the game, create and end difficult battles in unpredictable moments of change...