Philippe Troussier tested in male football of SEA Games 32

Before the 32nd SEA Games men's soccer officially rolled, experts doubted the squad use of coach Philippe Troussier. The French coach eliminated experienced players such as Duc Viet, Vi Hao, Dinh Duy and many others with trust in using young players with little field experience but answered with results on the field.

Coach Philippe Troussier will have to make better choices in tactics and people in two key matches against U22 Malaysia and Thailand. Photo: Anh Khanh

In turn to defeating U22 Laos 2-0 and defeating U22 Singapore 3-1, U22 Vietnam is having a pretty smooth start at the 32nd SEA Games where the attack was with young strikers like Van Tung and Quoc Viet who partly confirmed their expertise and value on field. Van Tung has especially a year before the 31st SEA Games took place in Vietnam, played a backup role for Tien Linh. However a year later, the striker on the Hanoi payroll has grown up quite quickly to become the main striker of U22 Vietnam at the 32nd SEA Games.

Van Tung's two goals in the last two victories are enough to show that coach Philippe Troussier has a reason to put his faith on the striker of the Hanoi Club and temporarily dismiss experienced strikers. However, it is a long way to know how good a horse is. It is because in the last match, the defense of U22 Laos and U22 Singapore were not strong enough to block Van Tung's ability. In the next two matches of facing two quality teams such as U22 Malaysia and U22 Thailand, the real ability of the emerging striker of Vietnamese football will be tested.

Not only will it test the capacity of the attack, the defense of U22 Vietnam will also have to face the fast and extremely dangerous strikers of both Malaysia and Thailand. In the last two matches, although the attack of Laos and Singapore were not really good, the mistake of the defense made us receive an unexpected goal. Having nearly 5 days off before entering the two important matches ahead, this is considered a valuable time for coach Philippe Troussier to correct the imperfections in the team's operational tactics. In addition, the selection of personnel for all 3 routes by choosing who to leave is also a problem that the French coach must decide for the two key matches.

Reported by Thai Hai – Translated by Vi Bao