Indonesia itself was also eliminated in the group stage of the U20 Asian Cup currently taking place in Uzbekistan, a tournament that acts as a World Cup qualifier.
The team from the archipelago is in Group A with Uzbekistan, Iraq and Syria. Despite a lot of investment from Indonesia U20 before this tournament (they even sent national team coach Shin Tae Yong to take charge of the U20 team, a rare case in modern football ), they still failed.
U20 Vietnam still shows many weaknesses compared to the top teams in Asia (Photo: AFC).
U20 Indonesia has 1 win (1-0 against Syria), 1 draw (0-0 against Uzbekistan) and 1 loss (0-2 against Iraq), with a total of 4 points, which cannot be called a lot given their level of investment.
The Southeast Asian team with the most points in the ongoing U20 Asian tournament is U20 Vietnam, with a total of 6 points after 3 matches (including 2 wins against Australia and Qatar, and 1 loss against Iran).
Besides U20 Vietnam and Indonesia, Southeast Asia has no other representatives participating in the U20 Asian tournament, including Thailand and Malaysia, which are considered unable to pass the preliminary round.
Malaysia's Vocket FC website pointed out the huge difference between Southeast Asian youth football teams and countries with stronger football backgrounds in Asia, through the 1-3 loss of U20 Vietnam against Iran.
"U20 Vietnam clearly had difficulty against Iran. Compared to Vietnamese players, Iranian players are much taller and bigger. At the same time, U20 Vietnam players are far behind their opponents in terms of speed" - the Malaysian newspaper commented further.
U20 Indonesia also did not have good results at this year's Asian tournament (Photo: PSSI).
This reflects that although football in Southeast Asia has made significant progress over the past 20-30 years, there is still a certain gap compared to the top group in the continent in terms of input selection, as well as differences in the training process.
Occasionally, there have been a few times when representatives of Southeast Asian football have participated in the U20 World Cup finals, such as Indonesia in 1979, Malaysia in 1997, Myanmar in 2015 and Vietnam in 2017 (Thailand has never participated in the U20 World Cup finals), but those are just temporary surprises.
Youth football of Southeast Asian countries has not had stable results when competing with representatives of stronger football backgrounds in Asia.
Regarding this issue, we can use the results that U20 Vietnam achieved at this year's U20 Asian Cup as an example: Coach Hoang Anh Tuan's team played very well, but in general, we could only play with one defensive counter-attacking style against all opponents.
Because there is no second or third option, the results that the Vietnamese team achieves depend largely on the form of the opponent: whether they win or lose against U20 Vietnam depends on their ability to take advantage of opportunities. Although we know the opponent's strengths, we do not have enough people to block all of those strengths.
Regarding the above issue, Coach Doan Minh Xuong analyzed more clearly: "Actually, Australia, Qatar and Iran all know how U20 Vietnam plays, the important thing is whether they can take advantage of the situations in front of the goal of the U20 Vietnam team or not. U20 Vietnam itself has no other choice but to play defensive counter-attacking."
Mr. Xuong believes that in order for young players to progress, we need to invest more heavily. The more young players get to compete, the more confident they will be and the more diverse their playing style will be.
That is also the difference in terms of level and partly the solution for Vietnamese youth football in particular and Southeast Asian football in general, on the way to the continent. To get tickets to the World Cup and youth tournaments more often, we need solid development from the foundation, which is the training stage, the quantity and quality of matches for young players, and cannot always rely on surprises.
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