AFC U23 Championship Qualifiers: Trust and Hope

(Baonghean) - This Friday, the Vietnam U23 team will begin their qualifying journey with a match against the host team Malaysia U23. It can be said that this is the match that will decide the path to Qatar to attend the AFC U23 Championship Finals for Coach Miura's students.

Despite setting the target of qualifying (coach Miura even thought of a favorable result against the strongest team in the group, U23 Japan), the preparation process of U23 Vietnam has made many fans worried. In 5 friendly matches, including 3 international friendly matches, U23 Vietnam won 2, drew 2 and lost 1 - a preparation that cannot be considered perfect. Regarding the playing style, coach Miura's students are being questioned because of their positions and coordination not being smooth. Many "experts" in sports newspapers or on television even said that coach Miura's training methods and tactics are making the team weaker and weaker, especially after the 1-3 loss to U23 Thailand.

Of course, fans have the right to complain about what they see, but it would be a bit hasty to conclude anything. The Japanese strategist has his own way of doing things. The Olympic team at the Asiad and the Vietnam national team at the AFF Cup played very successfully in 2014 with a similar style of play to the U23 team at this time, so why do we force Mr. Miura to change when the team has just suffered its first defeat in 2015 against the U23 Thailand team and has only been training for exactly 1 month? Moreover, the match with the U23 Thailand team is still just a friendly match and losing to a strong opponent like Coach Kiatisak and his team is completely normal. As an experiment, we need failures to find weaknesses to overcome, not to win like cutting bamboo to gain spirit before entering the tournament.

Coach Miura spends a lot of time conveying his football philosophy to his players in each training session. Photo: Internet

On the other hand, looking at the strength of the opponents in the qualifying round, we have the right to put our hopes on Coach Miura’s students. U23 Japan is of course a “bogeyman”, and the possibility of making a surprise against this team is very small. U23 Macau, on the contrary, is a very weak team. So, the main opponent is of course U23 Malaysia – a team that is not easy to play against at all.

It is not easy to say, because in the past 5 years, the national teams and the U23 team of Malaysia have had quite good results when facing Vietnamese teams. The tight, physical and resilient playing style of the Malaysians was once considered the "nemesis" of Vietnamese players. However, the current U23 team of Malaysia is not a cause for concern. The fact that the Football Federation of this country divided into 2 U23 teams - one U23 team preparing for the 2015 SEA Games and one team participating in the U23 Asian qualifiers, caused their forces to be dispersed. The U23 Malaysia squad for the qualifiers also has many talented young players such as Nazmi Faiz, or Shafiq Shaharudin... but the quality of this team is far inferior to the U23 "SEA Games" team.

Although they were called up earlier than U23 Vietnam, U23 Malaysia's preparation for the qualifying round was quite bad. Coach Razip Ismail's team had a total of 8 friendly matches, but in addition to winning the Bangabandhu Gold Cup 2015 with 3 wins against weak opponents such as Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, U23 Malaysia lost 3 matches against U23 Indonesia, U23 Fiji and especially the humiliating defeat against "younger brother" U20 Myanmar with a score of 0-3. In the last friendly match, U23 Malaysia was held to a 1-1 draw by U23 Myanmar in a match in which they were overwhelmed. Against such an opponent, if they know how to promote their strengths and overcome their weaknesses in the recent preparation process and compete with the highest concentration and determination, U23 Vietnam can completely win right on the opponent's field like the way the Vietnam national team did in the first leg of the AFF Cup 2014 semi-final.

Mai Anh