HAGL ever until… the old days?

To be fair, HAGL of Technical Director Vu Tien Thanh has very few options in terms of playing style. Their force is not abundant, they also no longer have the type of star who can change the game with just one shining situation like Cong Phuong or Tuan Anh could do in the past.

Because they are a weak team, HAGL is forced to use the style of play that a weak team usually has to apply when facing stronger teams: keeping a tight defense, committing many small fouls, as long as the fouls are far from the home team's penalty area, trying to take advantage of set pieces, trying to... waste as much time as possible.

HAGL (left) is at a disadvantage compared to CAHN Club but has... 3 points

In the match between HAGL and CAHN, the referee gave 8 minutes of extra time in the first half, and more than 12 minutes in the second half, so much so that coach Mano Polking of the Hanoi Police Club (CAHN) had to exclaim after the match: “In my opinion, HAGL played football in a way that I think is very bad for the development of Vietnamese football. I don't understand why players lay on the field for 20, 25 minutes. This makes the game lose its rhythm. I will never let my players do such a thing.

Highlight HAGL Club 1-0 CAHN Club | Round 7 of V-League 2024-2025

What do we get out of situations like that? The players have to play real football. I used to think that we were gradually improving the quality of Vietnamese football, but matches like this are really embarrassing. They won, I congratulate them, but that is not how we play football. Don't waste time like that. Where will we go with such actions? Where will Vietnamese football go?

Coach Polking expressed dissatisfaction with the way HAGL Club played.

Of course, coach Mano Polking and the CAHN players must first blame themselves. They must blame themselves for letting their opponents score first, because CAHN controlled the ball for about 75% of the time in the game, but could not score against their opponents, so first of all, they were poor.

However, the Brazilian-German coach who is leading CAHN has a point. It is true that HAGL's recent playing style is similar to the way many domestic teams did in the 80s and 90s of the last century. That was the time when football was still subsidized, the time when most of the subsidized teams at that time did not care much about selling tickets or advertising, so they were not interested in maintaining the image of the club through the way they played. That is, HAGL has just played the style of play of a few decades ago, not the fast playing style, putting all-out pressure forcing opponents to make mistakes of modern football.

With the current squad, it is difficult for HAGL Club to play beautiful football.

As mentioned, HAGL has very few options at the moment, stemming from personnel issues. “Weak” must use “power”, HAGL’s playing style has also reflected, they realize that they are weaker than CAHN and many other teams in the V-League, so they choose to destroy the match, accepting all criticism as they have just done.

Perhaps for HAGL at this time, the result is the most important. And the result is that they are still in 2nd place in the rankings, only 2 points behind the top team Thanh Hoa. For those who are nostalgic for the beautiful playing philosophy of the mountain town team in the past, when HAGL still had Cong Phuong, Tuan Anh, Xuan Truong, the past is truly just for... nostalgia!

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Source: https://thanhnien.vn/hagl-bao-gio-cho-den-ngay-xua-18524111201450552.htm