Song Lam Nghe An and the story of looking at the other team Dong A Thanh Hoa

Dong A Thanh Hoa currently has a squad that combines key players, locally trained players and good foreign players, in which young players are promoted reasonably and develop very well in a squad rich in physical strength, experience and youth, foreign players are evenly distributed in 3 lines. Although many key players have left, Dong A Thanh Hoa still retains the "heroes" Van Thang, Van Loi, Thanh Long, Ngoc Tan..., promotes young players such as Ngoc My, Xuan Hoang..., uses foreign players evenly as a backbone including Gustavo (who used to play for Song Lam Nghe An), Antonio is a great attacking midfielder and Rimario - former V-League top scorer. Playing well, Ngoc Tan and Thai Son have just been called up to the Vietnam national team, while Ngoc My has just scored 2 consecutive goals and is expected to be a promising new talent of Vietnamese football...

Looking at this successful "model", it is easy to see that the current way of doing things in Dong A Thanh Hoa is a "copy" of itself.Lam River Nghe An The golden age is not far away (2001, 2011). The only difference is that because they allowed many key players to leave, Dong A Thanh Hoa still has to use many domestic players that they did not train, such as A Mit, Dinh Viet Tu...

So, should the leaders and investors of Song Lam Nghe An honestly and sincerely look back at themselves and return to the way of doing things that brought the Vinh Stadium team success in the past, even though the conditions and capabilities of each era are different?

After 9 unsuccessful rounds (6 draws, 3 losses) and being second to last in the temporary rankings, Song Lam Nghe An is asking for reinforcements, which cannot be avoided or kept silent. We have raised the issue of replacing and adding quality foreign players for the foreign central defender position, it is necessary to consider buying overseas Vietnamese players and naturalized players, so that at least the squad has enough foreign players (3 as regulated), with more overseas Vietnamese players and naturalized players, meaning it must be more than the current number of 3 to be able to compete with strong teams.

In addition, giving Olaha the captain's armband is not wrong, but it is certainly not a fundamental, long-term solution. There must be a senior, leading domestic player assigned that responsibility, as is the beautiful tradition of the team. In a team with experienced, seasoned players leading, the young players will be confident and able to develop their abilities as Dong A Thanh Hoa is doing well, as Ngoc My (many young players of Song Lam have faced in recent youth tournaments) is emerging.

On the contrary, having just started playing in the V-League, many young Song Lam players were clearly “overwhelmed” with many things, so making mistakes is not something to be blamed. Many players could not physically play the full 90 minutes as required, leading to overexertion, overexertion, and having to be substituted as soon as they entered the field… No one knows where they trained and matured, but many young players only played well for a few matches, the rest were on the bench, and as a result, the team did not achieve anything, and the individual players had no prospect of progressing. The reality of Song Lam’s two miserable seasons clearly shows that.

In short, Song Lam Nghe An should return to the way that led to resounding success before, that is, having leaders, pillars in all lines, having good foreign players in all lines, maintaining the achievements of training young people to contribute to the first team, maintaining the team's achievements even though it is getting more and more difficult. That was when other teams came to Thanh Vinh to learn the "Song Lam model", but now the opposite thing, like the reverse flow, is that Song Lam Nghe An itself has to look for the successful model of Dong A Thanh Hoa or other places to look back at itself, to learn and maintain its rank./.