Vietnam U16 to participate in the 2024 Peace Cup International U16 Tournament: Changing fortunes with a foreign coach?

The name Cristiano Roland is no longer strange to Vietnamese football fans, especially those who regularly follow the V-League because this coach used to play for Hanoi T&T when he was still playing. Before accepting the position of head coach of the Vietnam U16 team, Mr. Cristiano Roland was in charge of youth training at the capital team, leading the Hanoi U17 FC to participate in the national tournament.

Directly working in the professional field at that tournament helped coach Cristiano Roland have the most comprehensive and accurate overview of the abilities of young Vietnamese players, belonging to the U16 group, using that as a basis for selecting players for the Vietnam U16 Team.

After about 2 weeks of training at the VFF Youth Training Center, on the morning of August 14, the Vietnam U16 team left for China to participate in the Peace Cup 2024 International U16 Football Tournament. This is a tournament organized by the Chinese Football Association (CFA) from August 16 to 20 in Shenyang (Liaoning, China) with the participation of 4 national U16 teams including: Vietnam, Japan, Uzbekistan and host China.

Evaluating the goal of the Vietnam U16 team when participating in the 2024 Peace Cup International U16 Football Tournament, Coach Cristiano Roland said: "Matches with strong opponents at this time are very necessary for Vietnam U16. Meeting high-level teams brings pressure, helping the players mature a lot. In addition, this is also an opportunity for me to test the connection between the players to see if they create the certainty as the coaching staff expects or not."

Mr. Cristiano Roland affirmed that the opponents that U16 Vietnam will face in this tournament are all very high quality and the coaching staff will try their best so that the players can play well, develop more and more, thereby having the best preparation for the 2025 U17 Asian qualifiers in October.

With that goal in mind, the result will not be the first thing that coach Cristiano Roland and his team think of at the 2024 Peace Cup U16 international friendly tournament. What is important is how the players perform against strong opponents and how they adapt to new tactics.

The transition period between Coach Tran Minh Chien and now Cristiano Roland is not long, so the understanding and understanding of tactics are certainly not perfect. But at least Coach Cristiano Roland has 23 best players for this training tournament that he has chosen himself and hopes that U16 Vietnam will have convincing performances.