Double duty for coach Kim Sang-sik
In 2025, Coach Kim Sang-sik faces many important tasks. He leads the Vietnamese team to the 2027 Asian Cup qualifiers, in a group with Malaysia, Laos and Nepal. The goal of Mr. Kim and his students is to win first place to get a ticket to the final round.
As for U.22 Vietnam, coach Kim Sang-sik needs to ensure that the team passes the 2026 U.23 Asian qualifiers, which will take place in September this year. Since 2016, U.23 Vietnam has participated in 5 consecutive U.23 Asian finals. Winning a ticket to the qualifying round is the minimum task and is within the reach of coach Kim Sang-sik and his team, before entering the 33rd SEA Games (taking place in December).
Difficult task awaits coach Kim Sang-sik
The problem for coach Kim Sang-sik is not only the official tournament, but also the preparation process. In 2024, Mr. Kim can fully prepare the Vietnamese team to play in the AFF Cup, because the U.22 Vietnam team has no tournament.
Specifically, the Korean coach had 4 national team training sessions, interspersed with only 1 U.22 training session lasting several days without any friendly matches. Thanks to focusing maximum brainpower and energy on the Vietnamese team, Mr. Kim brought home the AFF Cup 2024.
However, 2025 will be very different. For example, next March, the Vietnamese team will play a friendly match with Myanmar, then compete with Laos in the 2027 Asian Cup qualifiers. At the same time, the U.22 Vietnam team will travel to China for an international friendly match.
Since both the national team and the U.22 team have important tournaments, both teams will gather and play friendly matches in parallel. This requires Mr. Kim and his assistants to "split" to handle a large workload, with a large number of players (up to 55-60 people in each gathering).
In fact, Mr. Kim’s predecessors have faced this problem, and each has a different solution. Coach Park Hang-seo chose to use a large team of assistants, sometimes up to 13-15 people, to divide the personnel between the two teams. Mr. Park took charge of the national team, while the U.22 team was assigned to assistants such as Kim Han-yoon or Lee Young-jin.
Assistants run training sessions, record data on each player to report to Mr. Park, or even act as acting head coach to lead the team to friendly tournaments. When it comes to official tournaments, Coach Park Hang-seo still directly takes charge.
Assistant Lee Young-jin once represented Mr. Park to direct U.22 Vietnam.
As for former coach Philippe Troussier, the choice was to mix both teams and apply the same training program. Mr. Troussier let the members of the Vietnamese team and the U.22 team practice on the same field, at the same time and affirmed that "the distinction between the national team and the U.22 team only exists in theory". This choice is to help the French coach evaluate the ability of young students when practicing directly with their seniors, and use the young team to motivate experienced players.
Mr. Kim needs quality assistants.
Thanh Nien Newspaper once mentioned the issue of adding good assistants for coach Kim Sang-sik. Because after the contract of goalkeeper coach Lee Woon-jae ended, Mr. Kim only had 2 Korean "deputies", in which assistant Choi Won-kwon was considered as his right-hand man (like the role of assistant Lee Young-jin with coach Park before).
The coaching staff, with both foreign and domestic coaches, operated smoothly and systematically at the AFF Cup 2024. Sharing with the press, Mr. Kim said that the assistants were dedicated and contributed greatly to the success.
However, dividing the strength for the entire U.22 team requires coach Kim Sang-sik to need more assistants, even a "deputy" ready to replace him to directly lead the U.22 team when needed. Because clearly when the model of combining teams under coach Troussier led to failure, dividing the coaching staff for each team like under Mr. Park is probably the optimal solution.
Coach Park Hang-seo once had a stressful time, when he had to direct the national team's training session while... lifting the net to go to the next field to observe U.22 Vietnam's training (because the two teams practice on the same field). With about 60 players from both teams in each training session, the coach needed a very good assistant to manage the situation.
Coach Kim Sang-sik and the Vietnam Football Federation (VFF) will soon work to complete the coaching staff. Hopefully, the Korean coach will have a large team of assistants to prepare for the new challenge.
Source: https://thanhnien.vn/phai-tim-pho-tuong-dang-cap-de-chia-lua-voi-hlv-kim-sang-sik-185250201193533709.htm
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