Losing to U20 Vietnam, seen from opponent Honduras

(Baonghean.vn) - “TCoach Carlos Tabora and his team have not shown much special performance since the beginning of the tournament.BNorth Central American football is unstable, sometimes good, sometimes bad.”Coach Hoang Anh Tuan commented like that.

Ironically, in the 3 group stage matches, the match with U20 Vietnam was played by U20 Honduras players who played the best. International journalists present at Jeonju Stadium said that U20 Honduras was only slightly better than us in terms of physical strength and reasonable tactics.

Striker Thanh Binh was injured and left the game early. Photo: Zing.vn

Looking at the legs that were no longer as graceful as the first two matches, people secretly thought "if only" we had not used all our strength to play against U20 France, the physical strength of the young U20 Vietnam players would not have declined so quickly. The price to pay when playing on par with U20 France, in addition to the red card of center-back Dinh Trong, was a significant loss of physical strength. The French players were very experienced in international tournaments, knowing how to make the U20 Vietnam players chase the ball and gradually get tired.

Breaking the playing style of U20 Vietnam

It is true that after 2 losses, coach Carlos Tabora and his team do not have much hope of advancing, so the U20 Honduras players have an easier time playing than us. But that does not mean that coach Carlos Tabora's coaching talent is underestimated.

Understanding the playing style of U20 Vietnam, Mr. Carlos Tabora directed captain Andrade to separate Trong Dai, Hoang Nam, and Quang Hai. Throughout the first half, the U20 Honduras team focused on defense, whenever there was a long ball up for Rodriguez, Vuelto raced to exhaust the opponent. It can be said that coach Carlos Tabora succeeded in disrupting the playing style of U20 Vietnam, reducing the excitement of Quang Hai and his teammates.

The U20 Honduras defenders fought fiercely for the ball with the three strikers Duc Chinh, Tien Linh, Thanh Binh. After 2 collisions, Thanh Binh even got injured and had to leave the field, Tien Linh was "shocked" when he first started, and Duc Chinh always had to fly to avoid tackles from Maldonado and Decas. That simple style of play was effective because the defenders Tan Tai and Van Hau did not dare to go high.

Attacking with fewer players, U20 Vietnam hardly created any danger for goalkeeper Perello. Our players did not have many cross-field passes, could not coordinate passes in front of the opponent's 16.5m box, and did not have many long-range shots.

U20 Honduras played hard to divide Vietnam's midfield. Photo: Internet

Strike at the right time

In the second half, when he discovered that U20 Vietnam's physical strength had been significantly depleted, Coach Carlos Tabora directed Martinez to focus on exploiting Van Hau's position. Meanwhile, Rodriguez, Vuelto, and Alvarez advanced, focusing on long-range shots and hitting straight into the middle to pull the central defenders Tan Sinh and Hoang Duc up high.

When coach Hoang Anh Tuan instructed Trong Dai and Hoang Nam to play to the left to support the defense, the goal came from a pass on the right wing, where Tan Tai was too high to retreat. In a "3 vs 3" situation, from a pass on the right sideline, a U20 Honduras striker faked a drop to fool both the central defenders and goalkeeper Tien Dung, allowing Sendel Cruz to score into an empty net.

Obviously, the U20 Honduras attack was carefully calculated in terms of timing and direction. While the U20 Vietnam players practiced very hard to defend against high balls, the 2 goals came from the opponent scoring with their feet.

Coach Hoang Anh Tuan wanted us to play pressing, short and low to limit the opponent's physical style of play, but Coach Carlos Tabora asked his players to quickly attack to win the ball and play long to open spaces to compete for speed. Obviously "from the beginning of the tournament there were not many special things", but in this match alone, Carlos Tabora saw why U20 Honduras is a regular team at the U20 World Cup 2017.

To be honest, U20 Vietnam was not lucky either. If Quang Hai's long-range shot had hit the post and scored, we probably wouldn't have lost 0-2. But in terms of the game, with U20 Honduras being a not-so-strong opponent, we had determined early on when we received our ticket to Korea that losing 2-0 was something we needed to look at and analyze thoroughly to learn from.

An Thanh