According to information from the Vietnam Football Federation (VFF), the Vietnamese team will have a friendly match with Kyrgyzstan right before the 2023 Asian Cup. The friendly match with Kyrgyzstan will take place in Qatar.
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| The starting lineup of the Vietnam team in a match. (Source: VFF) |
The 2023 Asian Cup will take place from January 12 to February 10, 2024, in Qatar. The Vietnamese team is expected to gather on December 28 and travel to the Arab country from January 5, 2024. After that, coach Philippe Troussier's team will have their opening match against Japan at the 2023 Asian Cup on January 14, 2024.
In Group D of Vietnam and Japan, there are two other teams, Iraq and Indonesia. Before starting the 2023 Asian Cup campaign, the Vietnam team will have a friendly match with Kyrgyzstan on January 9, 2024, also in Qatar.
The Kyrgyzstan national team will also travel to Qatar in early January 2024 to prepare for the Asian Football Championship finals. At the 2023 Asian Cup, Kyrgyzstan is in Group F with Saudi Arabia, Oman and Thailand.
It is easy to see that Kyrgyzstan players want to use the match with the Vietnamese team to prepare for the match against Thailand at the Asian Cup on November 16. This is Kyrgyzstan's opening match at the 2023 Asian Cup.
Two football teams from the same Southeast Asian region, Vietnam and Thailand, are considered to have quite similar playing styles.
As for Kyrgyzstan, this team is currently ranked 98th in the world, close to the ranking of the Vietnam team (ranked 94th in the world). This ranking also reflects that the Kyrgyz team is not too strong, and is an opponent of equal strength for Coach Troussier's team to "warm up" properly, before entering the Asian championship.
In terms of physique, Kyrgyzstan players are tall. Many players in the team are over 1m90 tall (seeing from the Kyrgyzstan team's roster that "faced" Malaysia and Oman last November - the Central Asian team's latest international matches).
The physique of Kyrgyzstan players is similar to that of Iraq - the team in the same group with Vietnam at the 2023 Asian Cup.
Of course, the Kyrgyzstan players' technique is not as good as the Iraqi players. But anyway, through the match with Kyrgyzstan, the Vietnamese team can get used to the "air combat" that we may encounter again when facing Iraq.
Even another rival team of Vietnam, Indonesia, also has many tall players. This phenomenon is because Indonesia uses many players born in Europe and becomes a team with an advantage in terms of physique.
Playing a friendly match with a team of equal skill level like Kyrgyzstan will help Vietnamese players coordinate on the field and practice countering high balls.
Those are probably the goals that the Vietnamese team is aiming for through the friendly match with Kyrgyzstan, before entering the 2023 Asian Cup finals.
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