Why did U.23 Vietnam only play 1 friendly match before the Asian tournament?

The fact that U.23 Vietnam will play a friendly match with U.23 Jordan shows that coach Hoang Anh Tuan wants to prepare carefully before facing U.23 Kuwait on April 17. Kuwait is also the first opponent of U.23 Vietnam at this year's U.23 Asian Cup.

U.23 Vietnam training in Qatar

As we have analyzed before, if Vietnam U.23 wants to complete the minimum target of passing the group stage, it is best to defeat Malaysia and Kuwait. In Group D of the team under coach Hoang Anh Tuan, there is another opponent, U.23 Uzbekistan.

However, the Central Asian team is theoretically the strongest in Group D, and is a strong candidate for one of Asia's three official tickets to the 2024 Paris Olympics (the three highest-ranked teams of the tournament will win direct tickets to the Olympics, the fourth-placed team will play a play-off against an African representative).

Moreover, the match between U.23 Vietnam and U.23 Uzbekistan will not take place until April 23. Coach Hoang Anh Tuan and his students need to prioritize the closest opponents, the ones that best suit U.23 Vietnam's strength.

U.23 Kuwait is the unknown of the tournament, but the West Asian team is not so strong that U.23 Vietnam cannot defeat. The reason U.23 Vietnam plays Jordan is through Jordan, wanting to learn and get familiar with the playing style of the representatives from West Asia.

Basically, West Asian players have similar qualities, all are rich in technique, rich in speed and physically resilient.

In terms of playing style, except for the two top West Asian teams in the continent, Saudi Arabia and Iran, the remaining West Asian teams play quite similarly. These teams can play very well and be very flexible when their spirit is high. On the contrary, when placed in a disadvantageous situation, West Asian players often get impatient and make mistakes.

The discipline and flexibility in tactics of West Asian players are not as high as those of East Asian players.

The U.23 Vietnam team will try all these characteristics of a West Asian team, Jordan, to wait to apply to another West Asian team, Kuwait. If U.23 Vietnam can defeat Kuwait in their opening match at the U.23 Asian Cup on April 17, that will be a very important step for us to pass the group stage.

Coach Hoang Anh Tuan chose Jordan to play a friendly match to get acquainted with Kuwait's playing style.

The remaining strong opponent of U.23 Vietnam in Group D is Malaysia, who actually knows us too well and we know them too well. Therefore, the team of coach Hoang Anh Tuan does not necessarily have to choose an opponent similar to Malaysia to play before the U.23 Asia tournament.

In addition, because there are not many Southeast Asian teams participating in the U.23 Asian tournament (apart from U.23 Vietnam and Malaysia, only Indonesia and Thailand are present in Qatar), it is not easy to find a team similar to Malaysia to compete with before the tournament.

Therefore, U.23 Vietnam does not have many options to "warm up". In that context, we almost only need 1 warm-up match before entering the tournament, that warm-up match is aimed directly at our most important opponent at the moment, which is the opponent from West Asia.

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