Vietnam team is about to face a 2.06 m tall striker: A difficult challenge

The Vietnamese national team's defense faces a difficult challenge in two friendly matches with Nam Dinh Club and CAHN Club in early September.

Vietnam team competes with 'towers'

Without having to go abroad, the Vietnamese team still has the opportunity to face high-caliber players from Brazil, England... in two friendly matches in September.

Coach Kim Sang-sik's students will compete with Nam Dinh Club (4.9) and CAHN Club (7.9) in internal matches. Both teams currently possess the highest-class foreign players in the V-League, including names valued at millions of USD.

Vietnam team gathers again in early September for friendly match

PHOTO: NGOC LINH

Prominent among the names that the Vietnamese team will face are Alan Grafite (best player and top scorer of the V-League last season), Leo Artur (top scorer of the ASEAN Club Championship), Caique (former goalkeeper of the U.20 Brazil team), Kyle Hudlin (former striker who played in England), Stefan Mauk (former midfielder of the U.23 Australia team), along with outstanding foreign players such as Caio Cesar, Marlos Brenner, Romulo da Silva (Nam Dinh), or Hugo Gomes, Vietnamese-American Adou Minh, Brandon Ly (CAHN Club).

The squad of very high-class players from Nam Dinh and CAHN Club will bring a huge challenge to the Vietnam team, especially in defense.

The defense line with familiar faces like Duy Manh, Thanh Chung, Tien Dung is preparing to face off against "towers" like Kyle Hudlin, a 2.06 m tall striker, Caio Cesar (1.86 m) or Alan Grafite (1.89 m).

These are all foreign players who are making many V-League defenders wary, thanks to their impressive height and ability to jump in the air and attack fiercely.

Useful exercises

Even when participating in the Asian Cup or World Cup qualifiers, the Vietnamese team does not often meet such tall and technical opponents.

Australia, Iran, Iraq and UAE are the rare "giant" teams that Duy Manh and his teammates have faced. The Vietnamese team mainly plays in Southeast Asia, where in the past opponents tended to play with technical skills and tricky passing.

Striker Kyle Hudlin (2.06 m tall) of Nam Dinh is an opponent that the Vietnamese team must be wary of.

PHOTO: VPF

However, when the wave of naturalization hit Southeast Asia, with players of European and South American origin appearing en masse in Indonesia, Malaysia or Thailand, the game changed. The Vietnamese team has, is and will have to face "giants" of European origin right at the AFF Cup or the Asian Cup qualifiers, battlefields where players used to compete with opponents of the same stature.

Therefore, the Vietnamese team needs to continuously experience the feeling of confronting opponents with superior physique to train fighting strength, covering ability, coordination, or man-marking tactics in fixed situations.

In the V-League, V-League central defenders have always been supported by foreign players (usually central defenders and defensive midfielders) in high ball defenses. The "Westerners with Westerners" tactic in V-League teams helps teams defend more effectively, when foreign players with good physique are assigned the task of blocking the opponent's foreign strikers.

But in the Vietnam team, there will be no foreign players. The central defenders must work independently to fight the opponent's "towers". In the match against Malaysia, the Vietnam team's defense only played well in the first half, before being completely overwhelmed in the second half with a series of mistakes because they no longer had enough physical strength and power to maintain the position.

If Vietnam wants to win a ticket to the 2027 Asian Cup and protect its position in Southeast Asia, the Vietnamese team needs a stronger, more solid and stable defense. Let's make good use of the upcoming friendly matches to upgrade ourselves.

Source: https://thanhnien.vn/doi-tuyen-viet-nam-sap-doi-mat-tien-dao-cao-206-m-thu-thach-kho-khan-185250825115013464.htm