Southeast Asian fans: "The mistake of the national anthem of host Thailand is unacceptable"

"The host is very unprofessional. The worst SEA Games ever, even though the opening ceremony has not yet taken place," Her Hor from Laos expressed on the Asean Football page, frankly criticizing the 33rd SEA Games Organizing Committee for the incident at the flag-raising ceremony before the match between U22 Vietnam and U22 Laos in men's football at Rajamangala Stadium (Thailand) on the afternoon of December 3.

According to the tradition of international matches, before the ball rolls, everyone present on the field will salute the flags of the two countries whose representatives will participate in the match. The national anthems of the two countries will play and the players of the two teams will stand up straight to sing the national anthem.

However, for unknown reasons, the Organizing Committee did not play the national anthems of Vietnam and Laos. This led to the players of the U22 Vietnam and U22 Laos teams having to sing the national anthems without background music.

Notably, this is the second consecutive time within two days that the organizing committee of the 33rd SEA Games Thailand has had an incident related to Vietnamese and Lao football.

Yesterday (December 2), in the introduction of this match between the Thai women's football team and the Indonesian women's football team, instead of showing the Thai flag, the organizers mistakenly showed the Vietnamese flag. At the same time, instead of showing the Indonesian flag, the SEA Games organizers mistakenly showed the Lao flag.

The mistakes of host country Thailand received many unhappy comments from Southeast Asian fans, especially fans of Laos and Vietnam.

"It's clearly very unprofessional. They had a lot of time to prepare for the match, and the simplest part was playing the national anthem and yet an incident happened," said Kong Panhapiseth from Cambodia.

"Maybe it's because Thai people don't pay attention to the SEA Games. Most people in Thailand still don't know that the 33rd SEA Games has started!!!", commented Keiko Keiko from Singapore.

"It can be said that Thai people are not ready to welcome delegations attending the SEA Games," commented Phanna Tith from Laos.

"Why are there so many incidents at this SEA Games? This is only the first day of competition," asked Marco Setiawan from Indonesia.

"Why do mistakes keep happening these days? Is the monitoring and inspection work so bad? Even though technology was less developed in the past, unacceptable incidents like this did not happen," added Ujung Tombak, also from Indonesia.

"The SEA Games have just begun and there are already many problems," Chan Thorn from Laos emphasized.

"It seems that the host country's organizing committee has not respected Vietnam and Laos much and does not take the SEA Games seriously. It is full of superficiality and contempt. This is the second apology at the 33rd SEA Games, too bad," Minh Vu, an account from Vietnam, concluded.