Mr. Kim, do something!

Coach Kim Sang-sik officially took charge of the Vietnam national team from the second round of the 2026 World Cup Asian qualifiers, which took place in June this year. The Korean coach started with a 3-2 victory over the Philippines. After that, coach Kim Sang-sik's Vietnam national team lost 1-3 to Iraq. These are quite reasonable results, considering the balance of power between the Vietnam national team and its opponents in the current period.

After 2 matches in the official tournament, coach Kim Sang-sik continued to lead the Vietnamese team in friendly matches: losing 0-3 to Russia, losing 1-2 to Thailand in September, drawing 1-1 with India on October 12 (before that was the 3-2 win over Nam Dinh Club on October 9, during a practice match).

Coach Kim Sang-sik had an unimpressive start with the Vietnamese team.

It is noteworthy that in all the above matches, the Vietnamese team conceded goals in every match. If not counting the practice match with Nam Dinh, coach Kim Sang-sik's team conceded a total of 11 goals in 5 international matches. Of course, this is a large number of goals. However, in addition to subjective reasons, the above-mentioned goals also came from a number of objective reasons, which can be explained.

For example, the losses against Russia (3 goals), Iraq (3 goals) and Thailand (2 goals) were almost inevitable, because these were all stronger teams than Vietnam. Even coach Kim Sang-sik's predecessors, coaches Troussier and Park Hang-seo, failed to keep a clean sheet against these opponents, so coach Kim Sang-sik cannot be blamed.

The next objective reason is that coach Kim Sang-sik came to domestic football in the context of the V-League changing seasons, the 2023-2024 season had just ended when the Korean coach arrived, and the 2024-2025 season had only passed 4 rounds (round 4 still had 2 matches left to play), the performance of domestic players was therefore not high, affecting the quality of the team.

As for the subjective reasons, of course, they come from the team’s disarray and instability in past matches. In almost every match, the Vietnamese team has made personal mistakes (bad passes, missed clearances, bad marking…) leading to goals conceded in past matches.

Vietnam team could not keep a clean sheet against India

In addition, the problem of the defense does not only come from the fault of this area. Because the midfield of the Vietnam team in recent matches did not maintain the rhythm well, and the long-range interception was weak, the pressure on the defense was even greater. This is something that the team needs to overcome and can overcome, if in the coming time, coach Kim Sang-sik stabilizes the team's structure, and the players' performance is better.

In a few days, the V-League will return and compete continuously until the AFF Cup 2024. Hopefully, with more playing time, when coach Kim Sang-sik understands his players better and stabilizes the squad, the Vietnamese team will transform at the Southeast Asian Championship at the end of the year.

Source: https://thanhnien.vn/hang-phong-ngu-doi-tuyen-viet-nam-dang-mong-manh-de-vo-thay-kim-lam-gi-di-185241015145502154.htm