Vietnam Team: What is the goal in Asian Cup 2023?

Due to the change in the competition schedule, the upcoming Asian Cup, taking place from January 2024 in Qatar, will still be called the 2023 Asian Cup.

The specific reason is the hot summer weather in the Gulf region combined with the Qatar team's busy participation in the 2023 CONCACAF Gold Cup as a guest, causing the tournament to be postponed from the summer of 2023 to early 2024.

It is known that Vietnamese football has participated in the Asian Cup for the 5th time, the most recent being 2007, 2019 and 2023. The most recent achievements ofVietnam teamin this continental tournament is reaching the quarter-finals of the Asian Cup 2007 and 2019. To see, this continental tournament is not a strange place for a developing football like Vietnam, although reality always shows that maintaining the "milestone" of reaching the quarter-finals is an increasingly difficult task, if not accompanied by luck.

The story is not old when at the 2019 Asian Cup, when the Vietnamese team was "sublimated" in all aspects, Quang Hai and his teammates had to sweat, plus strange luck to get through the group stage. The Vietnamese team played 3 group stage matches, lost to Iraq 2-3, lost to Iran 0-2 and with a 2-0 victory over Yemen along with a "win" on the extra index of yellow cards, to enter the knockout round. In the match against Jordan in the next round, the Vietnamese team was once again lucky in the penalty shootout after the official result of a 1-1 draw, to enter the quarter-finals. And the story could not last, the dream had to stop when the opponents were teams of higher class, more experienced...

In this Asian Cup, the Vietnam team will compete in Group D with Japan, Iraq and Indonesia. Needless to say, the important issue for coach Philippe Troussier and his team is to overcome Indonesia, along with better stats than their opponents, to win a ticket to the group stage with the best 3rd place in the group (along with 3 third-placed teams in other groups). That is not an easy task, but it is not too much, impossible, because for a long time, no matter how difficult, Indonesia has never been an "insurmountable rock".

The biggest opponent in Group D is Japan, who is considered the top candidate for the championship of this year's ASIAN Cup, and of course Iraq is not a "soft" opponent. The Japanese team just beat our neighbor Thailand with a score of 5-0 and a series of resounding victories over powerful opponents such as Germany, Turkey, Tunisia... before that. The Vietnamese team only has a small advantage, which is that Mr. Troussier is knowledgeable about Japanese football and has played against them for a long time, we are not too inferior to other opponents in the continent. That means Quang Hai and his teammates must try to limit goals and cards to create an advantage for the home team in the future. Similarly, the Iraqi team is also an extremely strong opponent if they play their best. The Vietnamese team just played fairly with Iraq at My Dinh Stadium (0-1), this time we hope the players will learn valuable lessons to limit regrettable mistakes, especially in the final minutes of the match...

For the Indonesian team, the ambition and strong solution of naturalizing players is not really a concern when things have not yet had a specific result and coach Shin Tae-yong is facing a wave of dismissal demands from enthusiastic fans. Meanwhile, although he has not been able to create peace of mind in all aspects, the position of coach Philippe Troussier is still guaranteed so that he has enough strength and conditions to renew and gradually improve the level of the Vietnamese team.

So far, no one has clearly stated the specific goal of the Vietnamese team at this Asian Cup, to reach the quarter-finals like last time or to go further? But certainly, what experts and fans in the country set out and expect is a high fighting spirit, a spirit of not giving up, regardless of whether the result is favorable or unfavorable! The most specific goal of Vietnamese football, in the end, is to gradually shorten the gap, approaching the level of the top teams in the continent. Achieving this is a long process, having to go through many successful and unsuccessful tournaments, many generations of players with the participation and contribution of both society and football.

That said, if this Asian Cup is not successful, it is not a disaster, because playing at the highest level of the continent at the age of 19, 20 like Dinh Bac, Thai Son, Van Cuong... is a golden opportunity for them to gradually follow in the footsteps of their seniors like Ngoc Hai, Hung Dung, Hoang Duc... who are struggling with countless difficulties at a time when their form and resilience are on the other side of their careers... Let's watch the Japanese team compete with the Thai team to see how important and decisive the competition in major tournaments is. In the first half, Japan entered the field with a force that mainly played in the J-League, drawing 0-0. In the second half, they sent players playing in Europe onto the field and easily crushed their opponents with 5 unanswered goals!

Therefore, whether losing or not, the opportunity to face Japan or Iraq in an official tournament is a golden opportunity for any player, especially young players. Whether immediate or long-term goals are achieved or not, all start with specific opportunities like that. And whether every opportunity is fully utilized or exploited or not always starts with the will, from the spirit of not giving up of both the coaching staff and each official and reserve player. That is also the spirit of "one day of travel, one basket of knowledge"./.