Vietnamese football and the story of 'taking shortcuts'

Is this an obvious lesson when the story of naturalizing players is heating up afterVietnam National Teamunsuccessful in the 3rd qualifying round of the World Cup and AFF Cup 2021?

First of all, naturalizing players is not a new story in world, continental or regional football. In European football, naturalizing players from Brazil or South America in general is a "daily meal", even "powerhouses" like Italy or Spain still carry it out without any obstacles or barriers. Meanwhile, with a large number of immigrants, English or French football has more and more players of African origin and their teams are often no different from a United Nations team. Asia in general or Southeast Asia in particular is no stranger to this story. The problem is how much or how little, what is the quality and whether it is successful or not?

Vietnam team during a training session on the UAE field. Photo: VFF

Surely many people still remember the success in 3 consecutive Tiger Cup/AFF Cup of Singapore National Team (2004, 2007 and 2012) with players of British origin, but things suddenly became more difficult when these players got older, did not meet the requirements and still took the place of domestic players. We know that currently, Singapore National Team is no longer interested in naturalized players but focuses on taking care of the Fandi brothers and teammates, is this something to think about not only for Vietnam National Team?

Meanwhile, the Malaysian national team naturalized 4 players at once as known (Sumareh, Tan, De Paula and Dion) and the result was creating internal conflicts as the above investigation information showed! Obviously, the benefits are not seen yet, the harm is immediately seen when the incident was carried out massively, without verification, and without time to evaluate?

With Vietnamese football, since 2008, some naturalized players were called up to the national team by VFF such as Dinh Hoang La, Dinh Hoang Max, Huynh Kesley, Phan Van Santos... But then this story stopped for a reason and only overseas Vietnamese players were called up, most notably goalkeeper Dang Van Lam with his success at the AFF Cup 2018.

The Vietnamese team has made remarkable progress under coach Park. Photo: Hai Hoang

Looking from Vietnamese football to the region, continent and the world, we can see that the story of naturalizing players has both success and failure depending on the different ways of doing it in each country. Caution and moderation are the first lessons of big football countries like Italy or Spain. The recent success of the Italian national team has many reasons and the most successful player is the Brazilian player Jorghinho. Although he has Brazilian roots, this player came to Italy from a young age, trained thoroughly in the Italian football environment and can be said to be deeply imbued with the football culture of his second homeland, so his playing style has all the outstanding features of both football countries, both skillful technique and rich tactics.

Meanwhile, to gradually improve Japanese football, the national team once "plugged" a Brazilian striker (Alessandro Santos, often called Alex) to play at the 2002 World Cup and today continues to naturalize Brazilian players for futsal. However, the general trend of both Korea and Japan is to limit the progress towards not naturalizing and will completely use domestic players when the training process catches up with the world and the integration process achieves the expected results.

The ball dispute between players of the Vietnam Team (red shirts) and the Thailand Team in the first leg of the semi-final. Photo: VNN

In the region, it can be seen that the massive naturalization process of the Philippines, Indonesia and of course the Malaysia national teams recently was unsuccessful. Not only is the naturalized players second-rate, lacking national consciousness, national colors... but the main thing is that the internal strength is too weak, and nothing can compensate.

Recently, many people have talked about quickly naturalizing overseas Vietnamese talents to raise the level of the Vietnam National Team, creating a necessary shortcut. But things are not progressing quickly, not because of difficulties due to procedures, but mainly because of whether the real talent of those players is really guaranteed or not, or just shiny resumes? Mr. Park Hang-seo and the VFF officials must also be eager to have players with good physique, playing at the same level as the recent Thai defenders at the AFF Cup (Bihr, Roller, Dollah...) but it is not easy to have right now, but there must be the necessary time and material to choose and decide.

The most important thing right now is to focus on training young players, creating opportunities for them to compete with advanced football teams and gradually contribute to the national teams. The lessons of the Malaysian national team and many other teams are clear as day. We cannot "step on the same old path" if we truly and sincerely want to improve Vietnamese football in many different ways, including the story of naturalizing players...

Phu Chau