Looking back at the Hai Phong - SLNA match (2 - 3): Not just 3 points

The Park Hang Seo "factor"

According to the original plan, Vietnam national team head coach Park Hang Seo will go to Russia to watch a match at the 2018 World Cup from July 3 to 7, the period when the 2018 World Cup will play the round of 16 and the first matches of the quarterfinals. After that, the Korean strategist will return to focus on the plan for Vietnam U23 to attend the 18th Asian Games.

However, Vietnam national team head coach Park Hang Seo changed his mind at the last minute. The Korean coach stayed in Vietnam to prepare for the U23 Vietnam training camp towards the 2018 Asiad. His presence in the stands on July 1 at Lach Tray Stadium made the match between HP and SLNA much more interesting.

The calculations

Hai Phong people are proud of the team from the port city, they have revived players who seemed to have passed their prime like Quoc Trung, Dinh Bao, Thanh Long. Since they are not strangers to each other, coach Viet Hoang only used the central defender duo Van Loi and Hoai Duong, who were both players from Viettel, to counter the attack of the away team that only used foreign player Olaha.

Goalkeeper Vu Hai played quite well on his return to Hai Phong. Photo: Tung Le

The home team's central midfielders are An Giang player Lam Quy and Thanh Long, a HAGL player who has been highly trusted in recent matches. In fact, this season the Hai Phong team has borrowed 8 players (not including foreign players) from Viettel, An Giang, HAGL and SLNA clubs to fill in their gaps.

Looking at the team's formation, with the advice of Technical Director Ngo Quang Truong, the home team arranged many young players with good physical strength in the defense to try to block the fast moving midfielders Van Duc and Tuan Tai. Above Stevens, Fagan was asked to move wide so that the two wingers Viet Phong and Dinh Bao could suddenly move inside to threaten the opponent's goal.

On the contrary, SLNA still decided to actively play ambush, then suddenly split the opponent's defense to approach goalkeeper Van Lam's goal. To implement this style of play, foreign player Jeremie Dwayne was on the bench, and Ho Phuc Tinh was assigned to play as the center forward.

Surpass yourself

It has been a long time since SLNA has attacked so coherently when coming to Lach Tray and the fact that they scored 3 goals first is probably something that the coaching staff and Hai Phong players were quite surprised about. If the first goal shows that Van Duc, in addition to his ability to score, can also create quite a good assist for Phuc Tinh to open the score.

Foreign player Olaha also knew how to choose a position to score after a chaotic situation from a corner kick, with 7 Hai Phong players but could not protect goalkeeper Van Lam's goal.

The third goal came from a fairly new scenario of SLNA. The away team switched to a 4-4-2 formation, but the two foreign players Jeremie Dwayne and Olaha moved to the two wings to attract the opposing defenders, while Xuan Manh made a pass behind the opposing defenders for Van Duc to run up and score. The 3 goals from different attacking plans showed that SLNA's coaching staff was quite confident and well prepared for this match.

Physical problems

In fact, Hai Phong's attack still did what they wanted, which was to score. In the last 10 minutes of the match, when SLNA players' physical strength decreased, the home team scored as planned, Stevens scored to shorten the score from Fagan's pass.

The pair of Hai Phong foreign players did not help the port city team win. Photo: VPF

The central defenders Thế Nhật and Văn Khánh no longer had enough stamina to keep up with the foreign players of Hai Phong. The remaining goal was scored by Thành Long from a long shot from a distance of about 18-20m, with 4-5 white shirts but no one was following this young player.

A match in which the midfielder pair Khac Ngoc and Van Binh greatly limited the host country’s foreign players. It seems that when “freed from the task of attacking”, these two midfielders had a lighter load and completed the assigned work relatively well.

Until he was replaced, Van Binh had commanded the defense to play hard but just enough to not give Hai Phong players space to handle the ball.

Hai Phong played well, but SLNA won because they attacked better. With their 5th consecutive win, SLNA is the team with the best form in V-League at this time. Unfortunately, Xuan Manh, with a yellow card at Lach Tray Stadium, will have to sit out the match against Nam Dinh at Thien Truong Stadium.

An Thanh