Coach Park Hang-seo launches campaign to conquer the golden dream
(Baonghean.vn) - To prepare for the journey to conquer the Gold Medal in men's football at the 30th SEA Games, which will take place at the end of the year in the Philippines. Coach Park Hang-seo and his colleagues are planning to make it happen.
Dream of changing medal color
Since integrating with the regional football, Vietnamese football is still on the way to realizing the dream of changing the color of the medal at a SEA Games. The desire for the prestigious Gold Medal in the regional playground has lasted for 6 decades. During that time, there was a time when it was thought that the dream had become a reality, but the boys in red regretfully let it slip out of their hands.
Throughout that process, there have been many strategists from developed football backgrounds such as Brazil, Germany, Portugal, Japan who have come and gone following an almost predetermined scenario. The person considered the most successful in the position of captain of the Vietnam national team is the "wizard" Calisto.
However, what the Portuguese coach did was only to help the Vietnamese team reach the pinnacle of glory for the first time at the AFF Suzuki Cup. At the SEA Games, the “magician” Calisto also missed out on the Gold Medal like his predecessors.
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| U23 Vietnam in the match with U23 Indonesia. Photo: Van Cuong |
From the failure of foreign strategists, the Vietnam Football Federation has also tried with domestic coaches, but it seems that the head coach position of the Vietnam national team and U23 Vietnam is beyond the reach of Hoang Van Phuc and Nguyen Huu Thang.
Everything has changed since Coach Park Hang-seo took over the leadership of the Vietnam national team and U23 Vietnam, replacing Nguyen Huu Thang. During his more than 2 years as captain, Coach Park has taken the country's football fans from one surprise to another.
The Korean strategist helped U23 Vietnam create an earthquake when they won the runner-up position at the U23 Asian Cup held in Changzhou (China), where all the strong football teams in the region gathered.
That fairy tale continued to progress in the Asian Games arena when the U23 + 3 team once again finished in 4th place overall. In early 2019, our team continued to write a great story when defeating Jordan to win the right to play in the quarterfinals of the Asian Cup.
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| U23 Vietnam is reaping many successes under coach Park Hang-seo. Photo: VFF |
The continued successes of the country's football at the youth level are an affirmation that the path that Vietnamese football has been building is on the right track. Vietnamese football has found a quality captain for itself.
Under the 60-year-old strategist, the red-shirt boys' football thinking has been more clearly demonstrated, the players have learned to overcome the haunting expectations of the fans. They have put aside the tension when facing strong football teams in the region and are no longer "overwhelmed" by the Thais.
Towards the 2022 World Cup qualifiers
Although he has brought Vietnamese football to many successes at all levels and created a solid framework with a suitable playing style, the Korean strategist is still not satisfied.
Coach Park still has many concerns that need to be resolved, especially in the context that the SEA Games is also the time when the Vietnamese team must participate in the 2022 World Cup qualifiers.
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| The Korean strategist is planning to start the conquest of the SEA Games 30 Gold Medal for U22 Vietnam. Photo: VFF |
Accordingly, Coach Park will directly lead the Vietnam team to prepare for the 2022 World Cup qualifiers. The Vietnam U22 team will be assigned to assistant coach Kim Han-yoon, who Coach Park personally selected and proposed to add to the coaching staff to temporarily lead the U22 team to prepare for the 30th SEA Games.
According to the plan, the U22 team will prepare for the 30th SEA Games from June, with one training session each month, lasting at most 10 days, at least 7 days. From the beginning of October, the players will truly concentrate, devoting all their efforts to the SEA Games. At that time, they may add more assistants. The coaching staff will have flexibility during this time.
“During the period from June to September, the SEA Games team will focus on assembling the squad. There are some points that need to be overcome in the coming time. Some players are of age to play in the SEA Games but are already national team players, the gap in skill level between them and the reserve players needs to be shortened. Because the SEA Games is played with a frequency of 1 match every 2 days, it is necessary to fully prepare the personnel,”
Besides outlining a very detailed and specific plan, Coach Park Hang-seo also personally went to Europe to check the quality of overseas Vietnamese players to add to the national teams.
The Korean coach is currently interested in 6 names including goalkeeper Filip Nguyen, striker Alexander Dang, left-back Jason Quang Vinh Pendant, central defender Adriano Schmidt, Kelvin Bui, and midfielder Martin Lo.
Among these, striker Alexander Dang is the name that Coach Park pays the most attention to. Because the problem of U22 and the entire Vietnam national team at the moment is the lack of a real "killer".
The above moves show that Coach Park Hang-seo is making careful preparations to kick off the campaign to conquer the gold dream at the SEA Games arena which will take place at the end of the year in the Philippines.
With those preparations, domestic football fans have the right to hope that U22 Vietnam will realize the golden dream after 60 years of waiting.
