Comments on U22 Vietnam vs U22 Korea: Starting a new ambition

Today, March 20, the U22 international friendly tournament will open in Jiangsu (China). The tournament will have 4 teams: U22 Vietnam, U22 Uzbekistan, U22 China and U22 Korea. The teams will compete in a round robin to select the team with the highest score to win the championship.

U22 Vietnam has carefully prepared for the tournament in China. (Photo: VFF).

This is also the first tournament of U22 Vietnam this year with players born in 2003, 2004 and later. The main goal of the team this year is the qualifying round of the 2026 U23 Asian Cup and the 2025 SEA Games. In fact, this squad had a training session in September 2024 to participate in a tournament also in China called U21 International with opponents Malaysia, Uzbekistan and China.

From that, we can see that the young generation of 21, 22 year old players of Vietnamese football are being invested in quite carefully with many training sessions, preparing for big goals in the coming time, with a completely new ambition after the generation of players born in 2001, 2002 ended their journey in youth tournaments.

Even with this international U22 tournament, U22 Vietnam is also the team that gathered very early (March 10), much earlier than the other opponents also participating in the tournament.

Lee Seung Won (No. 8) is a mainstay of the U22 Korea team in this tournament. The player born in 2003, who played for the U19 Korea team, will come to Vietnam to play against the U23 Vietnam team in 2022. (Photo: Tran Tien).

The U22 Vietnam squad in this tournament also has a combination of many players who have experience playing for youth teams and the national team before such as Nguyen Quoc Viet, Nguyen Thanh Nhan, Nguyen Van Truong or new players who have played prominently in the V-League and national youth tournaments such as Nguyen Quang Vinh, Nguyen Ha Anh Tuan, Nguyen Hieu Minh, Nguyen Le Phat. In addition, two overseas Vietnamese players, Andrej Nguyen and Viktor Le, were also given the opportunity.

Although U22 Vietnam is not the strongest force participating in this tournament (some players are on the Vietnam national team), it is clear that U22 Vietnam's preparation in the past time has been very thoughtful and thorough.

The opponent of U22 Vietnam in the opening match, U22 Korea, did not have as good preparation as coach Dinh Hong Vinh and his team. U22 Korea only gathered from March 17 (3 days before the tournament). All of these players are playing for clubs in the K-League and were mainly born in 2003.

Notably, the U22 Korean team participated in a friendly tournament in Jiangsu (China) without a proper head coach. The KFA has not yet appointed a real head coach for the team, so it decided to send three coaches Lee Chang-hyun, Jo Se-kwon, Kim Dae-hwan, who have long-term contracts with the organization, to temporarily train the young Korean players.

After the shocking defeat against U23 Indonesia at the 2024 U23 Asian Cup and losing their ticket to the Paris Olympics, the 22-23 year old players of Korean football are not receiving the same attention as their seniors, which has affected the strength of U22 Korea in the upcoming tournament.

The match between U22 Vietnam and U22 Korea in the Jiangsu International U22 Tournament (China) will take place at 2:30 p.m. today, March 20. VOV.VN will continuously update the developments of this match, please follow along.