How did coach Park Hang-seo turn the tables against the Malaysians?

With the high pressing style of the away team, in the first half of the first half, Vietnam could not play as they wanted. Coach Park Hang-seo immediately made adjustments when instructing his players to change their playing style from short coordination situations to launching attacks with long passes.

Coach Park Hang-seo has prepared very carefully for this match. Photo: Trung Kien

And the Korean coach's adjustment immediately created positive points on the attacking front for the Vietnamese team with more opportunities created from the 25th minute. Typically, Tuan Anh's long passes to the front line, Van Toan and Cong Phuong, took advantage of their speed to break away.

Realizing that this attack was not really effective because the Malaysian defense played focused and almost neutralized the duo who both grew up from HAGL, coach Park Hang-seo directed to deploy more approaches to the goal from the wings.

The two situations where Quang Hai put the ball into the opponent's net both originated from the left wing. The first situation was Hung Dung's pass but unfortunately Quang Hai was offside before that. In the situation where Vietnam scored, Van Hau dribbled the ball on the left wing and when he could not get the ball in, defender number 5 immediately passed it back to Que Ngoc Hai in a favorable position, making a delicate pass for Quang Hai to perfectly finish the captain's assist.

In the second half, it was seen that the physical strength of the Malaysian players had decreased a lot with the style of play they followed in the first half. Coach Park Hang-seo directed his students to play an open game with their opponents in the first half of the second half and dangerous situations were continuously created.

When the lack of luck of the attack could not help the Vietnamese team score a goal to increase the gap, Coach Park urged his students to retreat deep to defend to preserve the fragile gap. And the result, the Malaysian attack could not break his "diamond block", not even having 1 shot on target in the second half of the match.

Coach Tan Cheng Hoe may have been right in applying the new style of play for the Malaysian team, but this was also a double-edged sword that “killed” the visitors at My Dinh Stadium. The physical strength of the Southeast Asian players was not enough for this style of play to operate throughout the match and if they could not get the lead, this style of play would have been counterproductive. Therefore, the second half of the match was almost a game according to the wishes of Coach Park Hang-seo’s Vietnam team.

Entering the game cautiously - Turning the tide - Maintaining the gap are the 3 things that made the Malaysians fall under the talented hands of "wizard" Park Hang-seo.

Coach Park Hang-seo had a wonderful day celebrating his 2-year milestone with Vietnamese football. Photo: Trung Kien

The victory over Malaysia also made the 2-year milestone of Coach Park Hang-seo accompanying Vietnam at all levels more meaningful. Two years to bring the Korean coach and Vietnamese football far beyond the regional arena with successes in continental tournaments. For the first time heading to a World Cup, Vietnam is off to a good start with 2 unbeaten matches, temporarily having the same number of points as Thailand but ranking 3rd due to a lower goal difference.

With an excellent coach named Park Hang-seo and a golden generation of players, Vietnamese football fans are full of hope that their team can defeat their opponents in Group G to advance to the next qualifying round of the Asian region.