Vietnam Team: Mr. Kim Sang Sik's midfield problem

Vietnam has a quality midfield, but coach Kim Sang Sik still has to worry when facing an imbalance in the red team's midfield.

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To prepare for the match against Malaysia in the Asian Cup qualifiers on June 10, coach Kim Sang Sik called up 7 midfielders to the Vietnam team including Hoang Duc, Minh Khoa, Duc Chien, Van Khang, Hai Long, Quang Hai and Chau Ngoc Quang.

It is not difficult to see that coach Kim Sang Sik owns an extremely high-quality midfield, in which the attacking ability is shown extremely well in the ongoing V-League season.

Vietnam team has many midfielders with good attacking tendencies.

Up to now, the Vietnamese national team's midfield has scored more than 20 goals in the 2024/25 season. In which, Van Khang and Hai Long are leading with 5 goals each.

Besides knowing how to score goals, the midfielders that Mr. Kim Sang Sik owns at this time also contribute greatly to the club's achievements with a series of assists.

The fact that the midfielders can score goals helps coach Kim Sang Sik reduce a lot of worries about the attack line when most of the strikers called up this time are not in top form.

Question marks

The Vietnamese team's midfield clearly has an overwhelming attacking tendency, but is quite fragile in terms of defense or support for the central defenders behind.

From this perspective, the only names that guarantee the ability to block and control the pace of the match in a certain direction are the most reliable Duc Chien.

Duc Chien (middle) hopes to successfully take over the position left by Doan Ngoc Tan in the Vietnamese national team.

This is a very big problem, very worrying for the Korean strategist when visiting Malaysia, which has many quality naturalized players.

In recent matches, although the Vietnamese team won, the midfield still revealed many dangerous gaps. Typically, the only goal conceded against Cambodia came from poor support from the midfielders, leading to goalkeeper Dinh Trieu being complacent and conceding a goal.

Therefore, to achieve good results at Bukit Jalil, coach Kim Sang Sik needs to adjust the midfield arrangement more reasonably by creating a blocking duo in the 3-5-2 formation that the Korean strategist proposed.

Balance in tactics is the key to help Vietnam win, while avoiding unnecessary mistakes against a tough opponent like Malaysia.

Source: https://vietnamnet.vn/tuyen-viet-nam-bai-toan-khu-trung-tuyen-cua-ong-kim-sang-sik-2405838.html