The center back who costs more than the entire Vietnam team wants to bring Indonesia to the 2026 World Cup; Andres Iniesta officially retires

Vietnam women's team faces many challenges

Share about the team's plans,Coach Mai Duc Chungsaid: “There are many young faces in the team, gathered to prepare for important tournaments in 2025. We will arrange for young players to have the opportunity to learn, progress, and perform well to join the older players on the field.”

Mr. Mai Duc Chung commented that the race for a ticket to the World Cup is very difficult, and the upcoming tournaments will not be easy either. Direct competitors of Vietnamese women's football are investing heavily, even in Southeast Asia. The Philippines and Singapore have naturalized players, and Thailand is the host of the SEA Games.

In Asia, besides Japan, South Korea, China, Australia, there are now North Korea, Uzbekistan, Iran… competing with Vietnam. The Vietnamese women's team needs a generation of young players to work alongside their seniors to improve their performance.

In the upcoming friendly tournament, the Vietnamese women's team will play friendly matches with host China (October 23) and the Uzbekistan women's team (October 29).

The Vietnamese women's team will have nearly 2 weeks of training at the Vietnam Youth Football Training Center before moving to China on October 21.

Malaysia confirms it has not given up yet, ready to double salary to invite coach Park Hang-seo

It seems that the Football Association of Malaysia (FAM) has not given up on its ambition to recruitCoach Park Hang-seoMost recently, Mr. Datuk Mohd Amin, president of FAM, once again affirmed that coach Park is still on his list.

Datuk Mohd Amin said that in this race there are 4 candidates, but to attract big candidates, Datuk Mohd Amin emphasized that FAM is willing to double the salary, from 100,000 to 200,000 ringgit (nearly 50,000 USD), to convince candidates to nod.

"My promise is that I will find a better successor than Kim Pan-gon. I guarantee it," Mr Amin stressed. "To bring them in, there must be an attractive salary. But that is not our biggest concern. We want a coach who can elevate the Malaysian team, take us to a new level. If someone is paid RM100,000 but is not effective, it is better to pay them RM200,000, as long as that person can elevate Malaysian football."

Andres Iniesta officially retires

Former Barcelona and Spain midfielder Andres Iniesta has announced his retirement at the age of 40. This is inevitable given that Iniesta has been unemployed for 4 months now.

Iniesta's illustrious career has included major honours for Barcelona and the Spanish national team. As a Barcelona player, Iniesta played 674 games, scoring 57 goals and providing 135 assists.

Those contributions helped him win 4 Champion League titles, 3 Club World Cup titles, 9 La Liga, 3 European Super Cups, 6 King's Cups and 7 Spanish Super Cups.

In the Spanish national team, Iniesta won 1 World Cup, 2 Euro championships in 2008 and 2012, and was even named the best player of the tournament in 2012.

Iniesta's decision to retire marks the end of a talented player's career. However, with his great contributions to Spanish football, Iniesta will forever be remembered by fans as a true legend of the "Bulls".

The center back who costs more than the entire Vietnam team wants to bring Indonesia to the 2026 World Cup

Newly naturalized Dutch-born center-back Mees Hilgers wants to make history with the Indonesian team and participate in the upcoming 2026 World Cup finals.

Mees Hilgers was born in 2001 and is currently playing for Twente Club in the Dutch national championship. He is 1m85 tall and used to play for the Netherlands U21. Mees Hilgers has just been successfully naturalized by Indonesia, becoming the most expensive player in Southeast Asia with 7 million euros (about 200 billion VND). He is also the 7th most expensive central defender in Asia, equal to Tsuyoshi Watanabe (Japan) or Harry Souttar (Australia).

Mees Hilgers' valuation also puts the player above the entire squad.Vietnam team currently 6.83 million euros, according to Transfermarkt.

"Our hope and goal is to qualify for the 2026 World Cup finals. So we have to focus on winning every game," Mees Hilgers shared.

In the near future, the Indonesian team will have two away matches against Bahrain (October 10) and China (October 15). These are considered the two most important matches of this group for the team from the archipelago, to increase their hopes of winning a ticket to the next round./.