SEA Games Football Follows the World

SEA Games - Photo 1.

Young players will have their workload reduced at the SEA Games if Thailand's proposal is approved by the AFC - Photo: N.KHOI

Specifically, men's football at the 2025 SEA Games may be divided into 3 groups as proposed by host Thailand, instead of the traditional 2 groups.

Too much pressure on young players

First, let's talk about the traditional symmetry of football, which is the division of the brackets. In the history of football, fans have been familiar with the symmetry formula in all tournaments, when the number of teams and the number of groups are always a multiple of 2. For example, the usual number of teams participating in the tournament is 4, 8, 16 or 32.

With the SEA Games, due to the nature of only having 11 countries and being a sports event, the organizing committee could not create a qualifying tournament (to reduce the number to 8 teams), the group stage was divided into 2 groups: one group of 5 teams and one group of 6 teams. In the last two SEA Games, thanks to Brunei not participating, the number of teams participating in men's football was 10 teams, divided into 5 teams each.

At the 2019 SEA Games in the Philippines, Vietnam was placed in a group of 6 teams and had to go through a tight schedule with 5 matches in just 11 days. Up to the final, Vietnam had to play 7 matches within 17 days.

That is clearly not a number that is suitable for the physical condition of young players. In recent years, the world of football has faced fierce controversy about player overload.

Many famous coaches such as Carlo Ancelotti have bluntly declared that his team will not play if the organizers and governing bodies (such as UEFA and FIFA) do not ensure that the rest time between two matches is 72 hours (i.e. 3 full days).

Compared to the recent SEA Games schedule, the average rest time for each match for players is only about 67 - 70 hours.

Therefore, the proposal of host Thailand to divide the tournament into 3 groups to reduce the number of matches for each team is a reasonable proposal.

Will increase excitement

Because the number of participating teams is odd, if divided into 3 groups, there will be 2 groups of 4 teams and 1 group of 3 teams (if the number of teams is 10, there will be 1 group of 4 teams and 2 groups of 3 teams).

Fairness is not guaranteed in this case. The reason is that teams competing in groups of 3 teams will generally have more days of rest. Therefore, they will have a certain advantage before the semi-finals.

The calculation will also be more complicated when there are only 3 group winners, and the second-placed team selected for the semi-finals will have to go through a race on goal difference. Fairness will also become precarious because there will certainly be more difficult groups, easier groups... To ensure that fairness, the football world has tried to maintain the symmetrical formula for many decades.

But as time goes on, FIFA and UEFA are gradually leaning towards the "asymmetric" formula. Typically, the Euro has increased from 16 teams to 24 teams, the World Cup has increased from 32 to 48 teams. And the Champions League has also increased from 32 to 36 teams.

A top tournament, the center of football like Euro also applies the race for the third-place team with the best record in the group, creating countless complicated calculations. Fairness is difficult to ensure, but excitement is abundant. Matches with no reward or penalty are almost eliminated.

If the whole world has boldly stepped outside the framework, there is no reason for the SEA Games to remain loyal to the old organization.