The most successful team in Southeast Asia in the second round of the 2026 World Cup qualifiers in Asia, up to now, is Malaysia.
Coach Kim Pan-gon's team (Korean) is temporarily leading Group D after 2 matches, with 6 points. They are the only Southeast Asian team to lead their qualifying group.
Of course, Malaysia is fortunate to be in a very easy group, alongside Taiwan, Kyrgyzstan and Oman. They have also not met the theoretically strongest team of the three opponents, Oman. However, the way Malaysia builds its squad is different from before.
If you pay close attention, the "vertical axis" (goalkeeper - center back - central midfielder - center forward) in the current Malaysian team's lineup consists of very tall, competitive players.
They often use central defenders Dion Cools (1.85 m) and Junior Eldstal (1.91 m). These guys sound very "Western", but they were actually born in Malaysia. Malaysia's central midfielder is Syamer Kutty Abba (1.86 m), and the striker is Romel Morales (1.87 m, this is the player who is naturalized from Colombia).
Malaysia (yellow shirt) is very interested in the physical factor.
Likewise, Indonesia’s European-born squad is naturally exceptionally tall, especially those who play up front. There is probably no need to elaborate on the physique of Indonesia’s players, as this has been talked about too much in recent times. Elkan Baggott, Jordi Amat, Jay Idzes (centre-backs), Ivar Jenner, Thom Haye (centre-midfielders) and Rafael Struick (centre-forwards), none of whom are under 1.84m tall.
Even the Thai team, which does not use many naturalized players, has players with very good physiques in the above positions.
The Thai team at the 2023 Asian Cup will use Saranon Anuin (1.87 m) as their starting goalkeeper, and Pansa Hemviboon (1.90 m) and Elis Dolah (1.96 m) as their central defenders. Weerathep Pomphan (1.81 m) will be the central midfielder for the Thai team. Supachai Chaided (1.83 m) will be the striker for the Thai team.
They are all on the list of 23 Thai players preparing for the matches against Korea on March 21 and 26. That means that Thailand in particular and Southeast Asian teams in general today pay great attention to the physical factor, a factor that greatly affects the ability to play high balls and the ability to compete.
Thailand's midfielders are also full of muscles.
Only the Vietnamese team does not follow this trend. Our central midfielders and even our strikers are quite small. Perhaps the team's main style of play is ball control, focusing on technique.
This is a reasonable way of playing, applied by many strong teams in the world. However, to have the ball to control, we must first compete well to win the ball. This is something that the Vietnamese team was somewhat inferior to Indonesia in the match of the group stage of the 2023 Asian Cup, before we lost 0-1.
The Vietnamese team once lost to Indonesia because of their poor one-on-one fighting ability.
In fact, Vietnamese football still has many players with good physique, good at one-on-one and aerial ball competition, besides not too bad technique. For example, in the defense line, we have Huynh Tan Sinh (1.85 m) who can play center back better than Phan Tuan Tai (1.72 m), and Ho Tan Tai (1.80 m) who plays aerial ball better than Vu Van Thanh and Pham Xuan Manh (only slightly taller than 1.70 m).
In addition, it is hoped that when Tien Linh and Dinh Bac (both 1.80 m tall) return, the team will have better strikers in both aerial play and scoring ability, before facing Indonesia (at the 2023 Asian Cup, Tien Linh did not participate, and Dinh Bac was injured before the match against the team from the archipelago).
With more tall players in the squad, the team will automatically have more options in attack, instead of being disadvantaged in these options before even entering the field. This is also a common trend that even our neighboring teams are trying to change to adapt to!
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