For two consecutive years, the better player in the Vietnamese national team lost the Golden Ball vote. After Nguyen Tien Linh in 2022, it was Pham Tuan Hai in 2023.
The 2022 season witnessed a brilliant year for Tien Linh both in the V.League and the national team. He opened the year by scoring against China in a historic victory in the World Cup qualifiers, scored 9 goals in the V.League before ending the year as the AFF Cup's top scorer with 6 goals.
In the end, he lost to Van Quyet in the Golden Ball race, who scored less goals than him at the club and made almost no mark on the national team. The 2023 season is similar. As usual, conflicting views from the public appeared before and after the award ceremony. Compared to Hoang Duc, Tuan Hai's technical parameters in V.League 2023, the first part of V.League 2023/24 and the National Cup 2023 are almost similar.
Pham Tuan Hai only winning the 2023 Vietnam Silver Ball is a surprise. (Photo: Getty Images)
Tuan Hai shines in the two biggest Asian arenas at club level (AFC Champions League) and national team level (including friendly matches and World Cup qualifiers). Tuan Hai's statistics on goals and assists in V.League in 2023 are not inferior to Hoang Duc.
It is important to emphasize the National Cup because this is the only tournament in which Duc is better than his age-matched colleague. They both scored a goal in this tournament in the direct match between The Cong - Viettel and Hanoi FC in the round of 16. That match, Viettel won 2-1 and then went on to become the runner-up.
In the 2023 professional season, Duc won the title of Best Player. That is also the only point where Hoang Duc is better than Tuan Hai.
In the AFC Champions League that Hoang Duc did not participate in, Tuan Hai made a huge splash with 4 goals against Chinese and Japanese clubs. At one point, he was ahead of Cristiano Ronaldo in the race for the Golden Boot. Hai was also once named in the best team of the round. His achievements here are something that no Vietnamese player has ever achieved.
Hoang Duc won the Vietnamese Golden Ball for the second time.
At the national team level, the comparison is even clearer when Hoang Duc is not used by coach Philippe Troussier while Tuan Hai is continuously in the starting lineup from the friendly to the official stage.
Sympathizing with Hoang Duc's problem with Mr. Troussier, but Tuan Hai was clearly excellent enough to convince the French coach, talented enough to conquer both his predecessor Park Hang Seo and the current coach of the national team.
Note that in Asia, the AFC Champions League is the highest level of club competition, the World Cup qualifiers and the Asian Cup are the highest level of national team competition. Hoang Duc was absent from all three competitions while Tuan Hai played fully and scored in two competitions. Although the Asian Cup was omitted because this tournament took place after the deadline for voting for the Vietnam Golden Ball (December 28, 2023), the difference between those types of competitions and the National Cup is still very large.
Tuan Hai's defeat to Hoang Duc is therefore still an unconvincing result for many fans. When the votes are not made public like FIFA does in the vote for The Best award, fans - who are completely outside this game - easily feel confused about the 2023 Golden Ball award.
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