Effort through every match

Because coach Kim Sang-sik is busy leading the national team to prepare for the LPBank Cup 2024 international friendly tournament, assistant Dinh Hong Vinh was chosen as the acting coach of the U.22 Vietnam team participating in the tournament in China. Speaking before the opening match with the host team China, the coach, who has experienced many youth tournaments, said that the U.22 team had only gathered for 2 days before leaving for the tournament. However, that was not a big obstacle because the players in the team had a long time to compete and mature together when participating in youth team levels.

"The quality of the teams participating in this friendly tournament in China is very good, so this is a valuable opportunity for young Vietnamese players to compete and develop. The matches will not be easy, but I feel the determination and confidence of the players. We will try our best and unite to achieve the set goals," said coach Dinh Hong Vinh.

The coaching staff of the U.22 Vietnam team also hopes that from this tournament, they will discover outstanding players to strengthen the U.23 Vietnam team as well as the Vietnam team to participate in important tournaments in 2025.

Yesterday, the U.22 Vietnam team practiced to get acquainted with the Helong Sport Center, where the team played the opening match against the host China. Young stars of Vietnamese football such as Nguyen Thai Son, Nguyen Dinh Bac, Nguyen Quoc Viet, Nguyen Thanh Nhan are likely to be given the opportunity to play by coach Dinh Hong Vinh right from the first match against U.22 China and promise to have a good performance. With the nature of the friendly tournament, the coaching staff of the U.22 Vietnam team also increased testing, giving many players the opportunity to play to hone their skills.

Need good investment for U.22 generation

Former central defender Luu Ngoc Hung said the international friendly tournament in China with the participation of teams that are considered to have better quality and expertise than U.22 Vietnam such as the host team China, Uzbekistan team and the "equal-sized" team Malaysia. This is a valuable opportunity for U.22 Vietnam to compete and evaluate their strength so that after the tournament, the VFF can have a suitable investment strategy to aim for tasks in 2025 such as the 33rd SEA Games in Thailand, the U.23 Asian qualifiers...

"Recently, Vietnamese football has had many teams focusing on many tasks at the same time such as the national team, U.20, U.16, but U.22 is still the team that lacks opportunities to compete internationally, and the concentration time is short. U.22 is considered the next generation of the national team, focusing on investing in this generation is very important for Vietnamese football to have continuous succession. The current U.22 generation is known by many people for familiar faces such as Thai Son, Dinh Bac, Thanh Nhan, Quoc Viet, but I have not seen any truly outstanding faces," said Mr. Luu Ngoc Hung.

Football commentator Huynh Sang also shared: "In fact, for Vietnamese football, the U.22 generation is extremely important, must be invested in and carefully cared for to find gems for the national team. Therefore, in parallel with the national team playing friendly matches, we also need to keep an eye on the friendly tournament in China, where the U.22 Vietnam team is participating. We watch the U.22s play with the mindset of "seeing how the next generation of talents of the national team perform, and whether there are any bright faces to add to the team. We watch and support this U.22 generation is also a way to motivate them. I still remember the generation of Nguyen Tien Linh who played with the U.22 Vietnam team to defeat the Chinese team, helping the entire U.22 team, and then the national team, gain more confidence when facing strong opponents in international tournaments. The U.22 players also entered the field with the desire to show their full potential, achieve good results to be selected by the coaches to join the national team".

Sharing the same opinion with Mr. Luu Ngoc Hung that U.22 Vietnam currently has no new faces to look forward to, commentator Huynh Sang wants to see the maturity and renewal of young players. "The paradox of Vietnamese football today compared to international football is that U.22 players have few opportunities to compete at the highest level. At clubs, they find it difficult to compete with experienced seniors and are also less trusted by coaches. Therefore, if the country has a strong football foundation, when concentrating on the national teams, they only need a few days to assemble the squad, but the characteristic of Vietnamese football is that it needs to be concentrated for a long time to have fluency and maintain stable performance. Hopefully, VFF will have the right investment strategy, creating many opportunities to compete internationally with quality green troops so that young players will become more and more solid", said Mr. Sang.

The opening match of U.22 Vietnam is at 6:35 p.m. today (September 4), against the host team China.