Who will U23 Vietnam find for its journey to reach new heights?

It was this coach from Khanh Hoa who declared his views on such a playing style of U23 Vietnam and certainly the results achieved/not achieved by Duy Cuong and his teammates in the future as well as the coaching lessons of a domestic coach will greatly help the process of finding and perfecting the playing style of Vietnamese football in the goal of reaching the level we are aiming for.

All the achievements and failures of Vietnamese football under Mr. Park Hang-seo allow and require the "new dynasty" Philip Troussier to seek and improve a new style of play based on human resources and methods of building forces from youth football, from potential factors and even pillars that can still serve the Vietnam National Team. Different from the previous successful period from 2018-2022, since being assigned to lead the team, Mr. Troussier immediately called up many young factors to search, select and build the squad, accepting the inevitable temporary failures such as in the recent SEA Games, for example.

At the 32nd SEA Games, Mr. Troussier introduced a series of potential new players such as Thai Son, Minh Trong, Ngoc Thang... alongside the "old players" Duy Cuong, Tuan Tai, Van Tung, Van Khang, Van Truong... At the 2023 Southeast Asian U23 tournament, although still in the selection process, calling up new players such as Nam Hai, Van Ha, Huu Tuan, including younger players such as Long Vu, Nguyen Hoang... shows a long-term vision of working hard to build up the force, in order to create fierce competition and diversity of resources for the teams.

While building a new style of play and the results achieved after the 32nd SEA Games with many conflicting opinions, the specific results of U23 Vietnam in the U23 Southeast Asian tournament along with the way to overcome the pressure of real combat against regional opponents will also allow Mr. Troussier to continue on the "chosen path" or have to modify and change his views on the style of play accordingly, before considering the long term.

In fact, everyone understands that against regional opponents, the fact that Vietnamese teams must change from defense-counterattack to ball control-attack is inevitable and achievable. But the problem is that against top opponents in the continent with superior physique, physical strength, advanced, smooth and well-defined playing style, we have been facing countless difficulties and challenges, always failing in our playing style and way of playing as we have seen.

Remember the U20 Vietnam team of Mr. Hoang Anh Tuan and Nguyen Hoang, Long Vu... who just competed at the continental level recently to see how miserable and broken we were against opponents with superior physique and strength like Uzbekistan? A central defender with good physique like Thanh Binh could score a goal from a header in the match against the Japanese team in the third qualifying round of the 2022 World Cup, but how many Vietnamese players have ever done that and even Thanh Binh himself has had a hard time finding a second goal since then?

The Vietnamese women's team participating in the 2023 Women's World Cup was recently praised for having excellent physical strength to play on par with the US team. Player Duong Thi Van was considered "Vietnam's Kante" with a strong physical foundation, but then the reality of confrontation on the world stage showed countless shortcomings in terms of expertise based on our physique, physical strength, training methods compared to our opponents, and no matter how great our mental weapons are, they cannot make up for it... So we cannot be satisfied with reality, and we cannot sit still when we always know where we are losing matches but have not/have not taken any measures to overcome them immediately during the matches.

After all, any style of play or method of operation must be based on specific people and specific talents. The Thais often beat us thanks to their skillful play revolving around the talent of Chanathip or recently Theerathon. The success of U23 Vietnam in Changzhou was thanks to a talented group revolving around Quang Hai and then we always had difficulties when there was no real talent to lead the team.

Now, when U23 Vietnam is divided into 2 teams for 2 coaches, finding and shaping the playing style is not easy, although the coaches always affirm everything from the beginning. The current U23 Vietnam has Van Khang, who was once considered a great potential (present in 3 teams at the same time including U20, U23 and Vietnam National Team since the time of Coach Park Hang-seo) and can be expected to be the one to inspire his teammates in the upcoming tournament, although the captain's armband is given to center back Duy Cuong.

Many people are hoping that from this tournament, U23 Vietnam will introduce and present to Coach Troussier new reliable factors, maybe Van Ha, Nguyen Hoang in defense or Huu Tuan, Long Vu in attack and some other factors. From there, there will be enough basis for building and thoroughly applying the attacking-ball control style of play that we are looking for, a convincing basis for a breakthrough and reaching new heights in the near future./.