Vietnam U23 and the Order to Tear Philippines' Net: Scoring Begins by Calling Chances by Their Right Name

I arrived in Nagoya on the afternoon of September 15. The rain came just as the Vietnam U23 team stepped onto their final training session before the most anticipated group-stage away match of the 2026 Asian Games. The training ground sits about two kilometres from Minato Stadium, its turf dark green from the water. A group of players broke off to practice in one corner: a finishing drill from both flanks. Coach Dinh Hong Vinh stood at the centre of the pitch, whistle in hand, eyes fixed on every ball. No one spoke loudly. The ball bounced on the wet grass with a dry, hard sound, unlike the softer note I had heard on dry pitches. Something in that session made me think of matches where goals never came even though chances did. Moscow taught me that preparation begins by calling others by their right names. This time, the name that needed to be called correctly was not a player, but a moment: the final touch inside the box.

The backdrop to this match is simple enough to be misread. In Group C of the 2026 Asian Games, after the first round, Uzbekistan U23 thrashed the Philippines U23 5-1, while Vietnam U23 were held 1-1 by Kuwait U23. The current table: Uzbekistan on 3 points, goal difference +4; Vietnam and Kuwait on 1 point each; the Philippines on 0 points, goal difference -4. Looking at those numbers, many rush to conclude that Vietnam are in trouble, that the September 18 match against the Philippines is a must-win at any cost, that Uzbekistan are an unstoppable opponent in the final round. I do not read it that way. The first-round result tells us only one thing: Vietnam created enough chances to beat Kuwait but scored only once. That is a problem of the final touch, not of chance creation.

This is the point I want to linger on longer than any number. Over 52 years of watching football from training pitches to dressing rooms, I have learned that there are two kinds of teams who lose with regret, and they are entirely different. The first kind creates no chances, and their regret is helplessness. The second kind creates chances but fails to convert, and their regret is a technical problem that can be fixed. Vietnam U23 after the Kuwait match belong to the second kind. The coaching staff sat down, reviewed the footage, and what they focused on was not formation or defensive structure, but capitalising on opportunities and finishing efficiency. When a coaching staff picks the right thing to fix, that is a good sign. When they fix the wrong thing, it is a disaster. This time, they picked right.

The core of the problem is not whether Vietnam U23 can score, but how they score against a Philippines likely to defend far deeper than they did against Uzbekistan. This is where the order to "tear the net" of the opponent, if read literally, could cause the whole team to misunderstand. I sat with my notes after training and recognised a familiar paradox. After a 1-5 defeat, the Philippines can hardly come out and trade blows again. They will sit deep, defend compactly, break rhythm, and look for a goal from a set piece or a counter. That is an entirely different problem from Kuwait. Kuwait actively traded blows and left space behind their defence. The Philippines will not. They will take away exactly the space Vietnam needs.

If that holds, the greatest value in the rainy training session lay in the lofted balls, in the wide deliveries and crosses, and in set-piece situations. A wet pitch is not merely a weather detail. It changes the weighting of an entire attacking plan. The ball rolls faster, short passes slip more easily, small combinations in tight spaces become riskier. Conversely, an early cross, a ball slipped behind the defensive line, a header from a corner all gain value. I heard that clearly in the sound of the ball bouncing on the wet grass on September 16. A team playing on a wet pitch must choose between the beautiful and the effective. Young teams usually choose the beautiful. Winning teams choose the other.

In 2026, in an empty stadium, I heard clearly that every match still had its own breath. The pause in a match is not emptiness, but a reminder that whichever team controls that pause controls the game. Against the Philippines, the pause Vietnam need to control is the first fifteen minutes of the first half. If Vietnam score early, the Philippines are forced to open up, and everything becomes easier. If Vietnam fail to score in the first half-hour, the Philippines will realise their defensive plan is working, and they will sit even deeper, break rhythm even more. At that point, pressure shifts from the players' feet to their heads. And with a U23 team, the head is the most fragile place.

I have witnessed this too many times not to mention it again. At the Asian Games or any youth tournament, the first goal is always a door. What matters is not whether it opens early or late, but knowing where that door is. Against the Philippines, that door is not in the centre. It is on the flanks, in well-weighted crosses, and in set pieces after the opposing defence has tired. This is the most basic lesson yet the most forgotten in Asian youth football: against a deep defensive line, you do not play through the line, you play around it.

A team is a piece of music that never stops changing rhythm. Vietnam U23 against Kuwait played a piece with too many extra notes but missing the final one. Against the Philippines, that piece needs a different structure: slower in the intro, denser in the middle, and decisive at the final minute. I do not believe in the idea that a team simply needs "more fire" to win. Fire does not score goals. Structure scores goals. And the structure against a deep defensive line is built from three things: width, speed of ball circulation, and the number of bodies in the box when the ball is delivered.

The most worrying thing is not that Vietnam's attack lacks technique. It is the psychological reflex after a draw that should have been a win. There is a kind of pressure I call "second-match pressure". It does not come from the opponent, but from the result of the previous match. Young players walk into the Philippines game with a question in their heads: "Will I miss another chance?". That question costs more than any technical error, because it makes a player touch the ball half a second slower, and half a second in the box is the distance between a goal and the post.

This is where the order to "tear the net" needs to be reread. If it is understood as "score as many as possible", it can create haste and break the attacking structure. If it is understood as "score in the right way", it becomes a technical instruction. I trust the coaching staff understand this. But the gap between understanding and communicating it to a group of U23 players in three days is very large. A contract does not fail because of a signature, but because of how a name is treated. Here, the name that must be treated correctly is "finishing efficiency", not "number of goals".

I look at the goal-difference arithmetic. Uzbekistan beat the Philippines 5-1, taking a +4 goal difference. Vietnam drew with Kuwait, goal difference 0. If Vietnam beat the Philippines by a moderate margin, they may still hold their fate in their own hands against Uzbekistan in the final round, depending on the Kuwait-Philippines result. But if Vietnam stake everything on goal difference, they will play a match where the risk outweighs the reward. The correct reading is this: beat the Philippines at any cost, prioritise certainty, and let goal difference be a consequence rather than a target. A young team chasing goal difference usually loses even the points.

One detail caught my eye in the registration list. There is no official data on the starting eleven, but changes in the attacking personnel are almost certain. When an attack finishes poorly in the first round, the common response of a coach is to change at least one spearhead. This is a psychological trap outsiders rarely see: the substitute will want to prove himself too much, leading to individual actions instead of adhering to structure. Against a deep defensive line, an ill-timed individual decision is worse than a lack of technique.

Courtesy of the wettest pitch, I return to the surface. If the rain continues on match day, the value of set pieces rises significantly. This is where teams that are underrated often gain a surprise advantage, because they prepare more thoroughly for situations that stronger teams treat as secondary. I watched the Philippines practise free kicks on a nearby pitch two days ago. They spent nearly forty minutes on corners, and that says more than any statement from their coach. A team that lost 1-5 yet still spends forty minutes on corners knows that the only way to take points from Vietnam is a goal from a set piece.

This is precisely the blind spot outsiders overlook. When people say "the Philippines are weak", they usually only read the 5-1 result. But a team that has suffered a heavy defeat becomes more dangerous in the next match, because they have nothing left to lose and they know exactly what they must do to avoid a second disaster. The Philippines against Vietnam will not be the Philippines of the Uzbekistan match. They will be a different team: slower, tighter, and more patient. An entire match waiting for one mistake.

So what is the real question? Not "will Vietnam beat the Philippines", but "does Vietnam have enough patience to play a match where the goal may come in the 70th minute instead of the 10th". Playing against a deep defensive line is a test of maturity, not of talent. And at the Asian Games, where the interval between two matches is enough to rest but not enough to train, maturity is not built in three days. It is built over years of youth coaching, and now there is only the test.

I left the training ground while it was still raining. In the car, I noted down a sentence to remember: do not count chances, count the distance between a chance and a goal. At 68, I place my faith in those who will tell the story next. But I still want to say one thing to this team: they do not need to tear the opponent's net with force, they need to tear it with precision. Youth football always rewards the teams that choose the simple over the complex. Against the Philippines, the simple thing is a well-weighted cross, a one-touch finish, and a mind that does not tremble when the ball arrives. If Vietnam U23 call their chances by their right name, the goal will come of its own accord. If they call them wrong, they will sit silently listening to the ball bounce on wet grass, as I did this afternoon.

The beat keeper is not the fastest runner; he runs just enough. And a young team only truly matures when it knows how to run its own distance, instead of chasing the rhythm of the shouting outside the stadium. The Philippines match will answer that question. I will sit in the press row, not scoring, not cheering, only observing. But I will listen to the pauses in the match, because it is precisely there that the answer ultimately lies.