Looking for a Head Coach: Southeast Asian Football Lost Its Way

Always considered the "lowland" of football, Southeast Asian national teams often have headaches when looking for coaches.

Mr. Anthony Hudson, who was appointed by FAT to replace Mr. Ishii - Photo: GI

From Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia to Vietnam, everyone dreams of strategists who can elevate regional football.

But decades of experience show that it remains just a dream.

From the lessons of Thailand

The recent decision by the Football Association of Thailand (FAT) to fire coach Masatada Ishii was not too surprising, but still tinged with cruelty. Cruel because this decision could destroy the long-standing friendship between Thailand and Japan. For a long time, Thai sports have shown their ambition to rise by following in the footsteps of the Japanese - from volleyball, table tennis, badminton to football.

Among them, football is the most complicated. The team sport that makes a country of billions of people like China have a headache and get lost. If success was simply copying and applying the formula of another football, China would not have declined in football.
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And the story of Thai people learning from Japanese in 11-a-side football is the same. Over the years, famous Thai players such as Chanathip, Bunmathan, Supachok have flocked to Japan to play football and have more or less established their position.

On the other hand, the Japanese have been constantly introducing good coaches to Thailand. In the past 6 years, FAT has twice appointed Japanese head coaches, Akira Nishino and Masatada Ishii. But neither has been successful.

Both Nishino and Ishii have been compared to Mano Polking - a little-known Brazilian coach, or Kiatisak - a former famous local player. And when put on the scale, Thailand under the two Japanese coaches is far inferior in terms of achievements and playing style.

Don't expect too much from the head coach.

Before the two Japanese coaches, FAT played big in 2017 when they appointed Mr. Milovan Rajevac - the man who was likened to a "wizard" with the achievement of bringing Ghana far in the 2010 World Cup. The result is known to everyone, Thailand "was afraid for life" of famous coaches from Europe.

The same mistake of the Thais was eventually repeated in both Indonesia and Vietnam. Indonesia fired Shin Tae Yong to appoint Patrick Kluivert, and then had to fire Kluivert again after the failure in the 2026 World Cup qualifiers. And Vietnamese football after Park Hang Seo also dreamed of reaching the world level with coach Philippe Troussier - who is more famous than Rajevac. The outcome needs no further explanation.

The greater the expectation, the greater the disappointment. It is a strange, inexplicable experience that football fans from all over the world, from different football backgrounds, can understand very well.

Take the most recent example in the 2026 World Cup qualifiers in Asia. There are two teams that made a strong impression: Uzbekistan and Jordan - both of which are football teams that are not much better than Thailand or Vietnam in terms of depth and investment level... but both of them won tickets to the World Cup for the first time with less famous coaches.

In Uzbekistan, they were built for four years by Russian coach Srecko Katanec, before he resigned in January this year due to health problems. Assistant Timur Kapadze took over the temporary position for the next nine months and still handled everything smoothly, officially taking Uzbekistan to the World Cup.

As for Jordan, they have succeeded thanks to coach Jamal Sellami from Morocco, who has no experience leading a big team. And Jordan also understands the lesson of appointing famous Western coaches. In the past, they have hired two big names of English football, Ray Wilkins and Harry Redknapp, but the results have not been good.

"Captain", "architect", "strategist" are the titles that football fans often use to refer to coaches, especially national team head coaches. This sometimes leads to excessive expectations of the caliber of a national team head coach - who actually only has about 50 - 60 days to work with the players each year.

Japan is the first Asian football nation to abandon the strategy of hunting for famous coaches to dream of rising up. After decades of building the foundation and also having a lot of trouble with Western names like Troussier, Zico, Zaccheroni, Aguirre and Halilhodzic, the Japanese have switched to using local coaches since 2018 and are still reaping the rewards.
success.

Of course, that is thanks to the already near-perfect system of Japanese football, in which the national team head coach is just one role.

On the evening of October 22, Thai media reported that FAT had chosen Mr. Anthony Hudson (British), currently holding the position of technical director, to be the head coach of the Thai national team. Mr. Hudson is 44 years old this year, has more than 15 years of experience but is not very prominent. Since the middle of this year, he has held the position of technical director for FAT.

HUY DANG

Source: https://tuoitre.vn/tim-hlv-truong-bong-da-dong-nam-a-lac-loi-20251022221049851.htm