Winning the Four Heroes Cup - A sweet gift from Huu Thang

(Baonghean.vn)- Interestingly, the two coaches from Vietnam and Singapore who participated in the Aya Bank Cup 2016 final were both playing Southeast Asian football for the first time. Therefore, although it was just a friendly tournament, neither coach wanted to lose.

Huu Thang took over the team after 9 foreign coaches had taken charge of Vietnamese teams since the country's football reintegrated with the region and the world in 1994. Coach Miura from Japan is the latest foreigner to be fired. While Coach Huu Thang was officially appointed on March 3, 2016, Sundramoorthy has been the new head coach of the Singapore team for exactly... 7 days.

Cong Vinh is the hero of the Vietnamese team, scoring three goals in two matches.

It took 16 years for the Singapore Football Federation to trust a local to be the head coach of the national team. Sundramoorthy is a former midfielder who played for Singapore for more than 10 years (scoring 3 goals), so he is loyal to the philosophy of tight defense, fast and simple attack in the English style based on good physical strength.

Mind game

The tactic that Coach Huu Thang has favored and pursued for the past 3 months is 4-1-4-1 based on the duo of midfielders with good individual techniques, Xuan Truong and Tuan Anh. The Vietnamese team with players with a strong technical style of play, Van Quyet, Thanh Luong, Cong Vinh, Van Toan... mainly plays short, low and with few touches to counter the long, high style of play of the Lion Island team. Meanwhile, Coach Sundramoorthy prefers to use the 4-3-2-1 formation with striker Fazrul playing very well. Observing the Vietnamese team play, Coach Sundramoorthy arranged 3 midfielders with good physical strength and technique, namely Harrun, Azhar, Gabriel, including Harrun, who is a central defender, with the task of separating the explosive Xuan Truong and Tuan Anh.

Meanwhile, coach Huu Thang will arrange Van Quyet to play higher than usual to harass the Singaporean central defenders Khaizan and Madhu, who are tall but slow to move. In return, Singapore goalkeeper Hassan Sunny has very stable performance, he was selected by the Telegraph as one of the top 20 best goalkeepers in the world, alongside De Gea, Neuer and Buffon.

Late fate

Obviously, because they knew each other so well, Singapore took the initiative to play slowly and clustered, making it extremely difficult for the Vietnamese team to attack. In the first half, Van Quyet and Cong Vinh had a few situations right in the 5.5m box but did not convert the opportunities into goals. The most regrettable thing was in the 37th minute, Thanh Luong took a corner kick on the right wing, Van Quyet had the ball near the Singapore goal but his quick shot missed the post. Meanwhile, as Huu Thang had predicted, Haris Harun played as a holding midfielder and played extremely aggressively. In the 10th minute, this player received a yellow card for deliberately fouling Tuan Anh.

Coach Huu Thang is succeeding in building an attractive playing style for the Vietnam team.

Near the end of the first half, when his physical strength was exhausted, Singapore rushed to attack. In the 44th minute, Singapore was awarded a free kick on the left wing. Yun Ji received the ball in a favorable position but shot over the bar. Goalkeeper Sunny made an excellent save and discouraged strikers Van Quyet and Van Toan. Cong Vinh, in his 75th appearance for the national team, seemed to have no luck in scoring when in the first two halves, the ball either hit the opposing team's player or the post.

When fans were thinking of a sad ending, worried that the Vietnamese players would run out of battery after 90 minutes of intense play, Huu Thang showed his skill. He replaced Xuan Truong with Huy Hung, directing the team to focus on attacking the center by asking Thanh Luong, Cong Vinh, and Van Quyet to play closer together. Having played for many years in the HN.T&T team, Cong Vinh received Van Quyet's "cross-eyed" pass (looking in one place and passing to another) and scored.

While the Singapore defenders were stunned, from the situation where Cong Vinh kicked off a Singaporean player, Van Quyet had a rather open situation to score the second goal. Obviously, coach Sundramoorthy had studied the movements of the "trio" Cong Vinh - Van Quyet - Thanh Luong, but the Singaporean defenders could not do anything more. At this time, it was not the Vietnamese team that was exhausted, but the big but mentally heavy players of the opposing team could no longer move flexibly, allowing Thanh Trung, a substitute player, to score the winning goal, 3-0.

Although he has only been in charge of the team for a short time, it seems that Coach Huu Thang is showing his cool with an impressive victory over Syria and convincingly winning the Tu Hung Cup. This is the sweet gift that Coach Huu Thang gives to the country's football fans. Once again, congratulations to Huu Thang!

An Thanh