SLNA: Too many coaches but not enough

It is worth mentioning that, despite having a strong coaching team in place,SLNAstill going through difficult seasons, especially the last two seasons, where the direct responsibility has been "blamed" on the head coach and the coaching staff. The burning question is: will the new investor continue to use the "old trick", that is, using the team's on-site coach, or bring in a new factor to regain the old glory, even create a new force to compete with other teams with strong soldiers and generals?

Coach Nguyen Thanh Vinh. Photo courtesy of CTV

Reality shows that, under the hands of a powerful and ambitious “investor-boss”, anything can happen. Quickly retaining Van Duc with a “blockbuster” event, with the undisguised intention of firstly retaining the pillars, finding good foreign players, and in the long term “calling back” SLNA talents who had left during the “talent drain” period, of course, those who will sit in the team’s technical area will also be carefully calculated for the relegation and “acceleration” steps later.

Many people know that SLNA has long owned many famous coaches, mainly in youth football, such as Nguyen Van Thinh, Dinh Van Dung, Le Ky Phuong... and at a higher level, in the V. League, in addition to the retired or transferred coaches such as Nguyen Thanh Vinh, Nguyen Huu Thang, Vu Quang Bao, Nguyen Thanh Cong, Pham Anh Tuan..., have the remaining coaching staff proven their skills when taking on the task? There are also people who boldly say something that is not easy to hear: the coaching staff at Song Lam is large, they have to be loaned out, but finding truly good people for Song Lam to play well is... very lacking?

Even with the solid success of youth training for many years, public opinion has begun to talk about the weakness in SLNA's technical area when the young generations are gradually losing ground to other emerging centers, especially when they have strong "force" and can invite a full foreign team? Or like the coach who is not afraid to say directly that playing against SLNA is very easy now because the team is used to operating according to an old "playbook"?

Coach Nguyen Huu Thang. Photo: LDO

Looking at the training map, everyone knows that SLNA coaches are everywhere, taking on many important positions in V. League, First Division, Second Division teams... in different positions. To see, SLNA's coaching team is larger than any other Vietnamese football club at present, they can do the job, but still need time to verify the required "cool hand"? Moreover, having only one basic coach in the main profession - teaching football to the players, it can be seen that SLNA as well as most V. League teams still seriously lack goalkeeper coaches, fitness coaches, medical staff... meaning they have not kept up with the requirements of professional training, it is very difficult to achieve high results if they still teach "barely", practice "barely" with lesson plans that are not updated regularly as seen.

The “career” of a coach, like the “life” of a player in general, is very harsh. You may be successful today, but tomorrow is a completely different story; at the same time, failure today can create a determination to succeed the next day, the day after, and the day after that. The example of coach Park Hang-seo when he came to Vietnam is a great lesson for those who “take on the profession” of commanding a team, loving and trusting his students wholeheartedly but also being strict to the extreme, knowing how to stand up, knowing how to seize opportunities after failures that seem impossible to recover from?

For Song Lam Nghe An, it seems that the opportunity is coming faster than many people think? Will Huy Hoang, Nhu Thuat, Van Quyen… and many other names know how to seize this opportunity to learn, to do something when Vietnamese football is on the rise, especially when Song Lam is in a hurry to “rise the tide, the boat rises”…