The UAE has often been defeated in Vietnam's historical football victories, and there's a reason for that.

UAE football is superior to Vietnamese football, with their players possessing better qualities. The UAE national team participated in the 1990 World Cup, yet strangely, they have often been the victims in the historical triumphs of the Vietnamese national teams.

"Victims" of the Vietnamese national teams

In terms of numbers, UAE teams have an overwhelming number of wins against Vietnamese teams. However, at certain times, Vietnamese teams have always had particularly good matches against representatives of UAE football.

Coach Kim Sang-sik and his players can refer to Vietnam's past victories against the UAE before tonight's quarter-final match.

Photo: VFF

At the 2007 Asian Cup, the Vietnamese national team was in a very tough Group B with opponents Japan, Qatar, and the UAE. We only won one match in this group, a 2-0 victory against the UAE at My Dinh Stadium. The goalscorers for coach Alfred Riedl's team that year were Huynh Quang Thanh and Le Cong Vinh.

And the only victory in the group stage of that tournament (along with a 1-1 draw with Qatar) helped the Vietnamese team advance to the quarterfinals of the Asian Championship. That was the first time in the history of Vietnamese football that a representative reached the quarterfinals of the Asian Cup.

The experienced U.23 Vietnamese players are well-suited to facing representatives of West Asian football.

Photo: TED Tran

It's important to know that before 2007, Vietnamese football was quite unfamiliar with continental football finals. At that time, we rarely qualified for the finals of Asian football tournaments at any level, let alone reached the quarter-finals. Therefore, the victory against UAE in 2007, and subsequently the Vietnamese national team's qualification for the knockout round of the Asian Cup, was considered a seismic event in Asian football.

Twelve years after that day, the Vietnamese national team under coach Park Hang-seo achieved another memorable victory against the UAE. This was a 1-0 win in the first leg of the second round of the 2022 World Cup qualifiers in the Asian region, at My Dinh Stadium on November 14, 2019. Tien Linh scored the only goal in that match. The victory against the UAE marked the beginning of Vietnam's qualification for the third round of the 2022 World Cup qualifiers in the Asian region. For the first time in history, we went this far in a World Cup qualifying campaign.

Between the two aforementioned milestones, Vietnamese football had another draw that felt like a victory against a representative from the UAE. This was the 1-1 draw between the Vietnam U20 team and the UAE U20 team in the group stage of the 2016 AFC U20 Championship in Bahrain. This draw directly eliminated the UAE U20 team from the tournament, while Vietnam U20 advanced to the quarterfinals. Subsequently, Coach Hoang Anh Tuan's young team went on to win against host Bahrain (1-0) in the quarterfinals, securing a place in the semifinals and qualifying for the 2017 U20 World Cup. This was the first and only time, to date, that Vietnamese football has qualified for the U20 World Cup.

The obvious weaknesses of the UAE players.

The fact that UAE football is stronger, yet occasionally loses to Vietnam in very important matches, has its reasons. UAE players generally surpass Vietnamese players in speed, physique, and stamina, but they are inferior to us in terms of organization and discipline, and lose out psychologically.

UAE football has clear weaknesses in tactical discipline and mentality that the Vietnam U23 team can exploit.

When in a state of high spirits, UAE players play with great enthusiasm and flair. Conversely, when faced with unfavorable situations or when things don't go their way, UAE players easily lose their composure, their formation often becomes disorganized, and they almost lose their cohesion with their teammates, falling into individual play.

Generations of Vietnamese players and coaches, if they know how to properly exploit these weaknesses of their opponents, and if they are sufficiently alert and experienced, can force the representatives of UAE football to reveal the aforementioned weaknesses, which we can then exploit.

Coach Kim Sang-sik 's current Vietnam U23 team possesses all the aforementioned qualities. We recently defeated a team with similar characteristics to the UAE U23 team, namely Saudi Arabia U23, a few days ago. Therefore, we are completely confident that we will continue to defeat the UAE U23 team in tonight's quarter-final match using the same approach.

Thanhnien.vn

Source: https://thanhnien.vn/uae-thuong-bai-tran-trong-cac-chien-tich-lich-su-cua-bong-da-viet-nam-tat-ca-deu-co-ly-do-185260116140833536.htm