After a 2023 with many highlights, goalkeeper Tran Thi Kim Thanh won the Vietnamese Women's Golden Ball, ending Huynh Nhu's four-year dominance in this category.
Last year, Kim Thanh stood out with her third consecutive SEA Games gold medal and fifth consecutive national championship with Ho Chi Minh City Club. She was also commented by experts as the best Vietnamese player in her first World Cup journey.
Vietnam were eliminated early in the group stage with three defeats and 13 goals conceded, but that number could have been even higher if it weren’t for Kim Thanh’s 15 saves – the sixth most saves of any goalkeeper in the group stage. The 1.65m-tall goalkeeper was even more impressive when she blocked a penalty kick from American striker Alex Morgan – one of the greatest scorers in women’s football history.
Tran Thi Kim Thanh won the Vietnamese Women's Golden Ball for the first time. Photo: Duc Dong
Before she became involved in football, Kim Thanh was a normal girl in Duc Hoa district, Long An province. Her family was poor, so Thanh had to help her mother pick beans or follow the adults to catch fish to earn extra income. "I followed my mother to the fields at 4am," Thanh shared. "Picking a bucket of beans earned me 2,500 VND and I earned 25,000 VND every day."
Football entered Kim Thanh's life from the football matches with her neighborhood boys on the rice fields. Thanh admitted that she did not know much about football, especially the goalkeeper position, until she was selected for the Ho Chi Minh City women's youth team at the age of 14. She was recruited thanks to her good height and bigger hands than other girls her age. The whole family agreed to let Thanh leave her hometown for Ho Chi Minh City, except for her mother, Mrs. Duong Thi Phuong, but they had to agree because of her daughter's determination in her hobby. Not only was it a passion, Thanh left her hometown because she thought of her family, thinking "a poor family would have one less mouth to feed".
Tran Thi Kim Thanh blocks Alex Morgan's shot in Vietnam's 0-3 loss to the US in the opening match of the 2023 World Cup group stage. Photo: Duc Dong
Kim Thanh was then trained systematically and gradually became a bright face in goal, promoted to the first team of Ho Chi Minh City Club in 2010. Four years later, Thanh was first called up to the Vietnam national team.
Kim Thanh’s advantage is that she is coached by legendary goalkeeper Nguyen Thi Kim Hong, and trained with living legend Dang Thi Kieu Trinh. But it is also because of Kieu Trinh’s stability that it was not until her senior retired in 2018 that Kim Thanh gradually became the main player in the club and the national team – where she had to compete fiercely with Khong Thi Hang.
Her debut match with the national team was an unforgettable memory for Kim Thanh, when she made two mistakes in the 2-4 defeat of U20 Australia in the semi-finals of the 2018 AFF Cup. Thanh cried all the way from the stadium to the hotel, cried when calling her family and then suffered for a long time. Not only that, the kneecap injury in both legs caused constant pain, making Kim Thanh think about retiring. "The teachers encouraged me a lot so I had time to recover," Thanh recalled. "However, I still had to wrap my knees and inject lubricant into my legs before competing."
Kim Thanh cried when speaking, after fulfilling her dream of winning the Vietnamese Golden Ball. Photo: Duc Dong
Kim Thanh has worked hard to achieve valuable results. She is the key factor helping Vietnam win a hat-trick of gold medals at the 2019, 2021 and 2023 SEA Games, and then win the 2019 AFF Cup. In 2022, Thanh became the goalkeeper with the most saves at the Asian Cup, including some amazing saves in the 2-1 win over Taiwan, bringing Vietnamese women's football to the World Cup for the first time.
In 2021, Kim Thanh expressed: "I wish to win the Golden Ball once". And now, she has fulfilled her wish, becoming the third goalkeeper in Vietnamese history to win this award, after Nguyen Thi Kim Hong in 2002 and Dang Thi Kieu Trinh in 2011, 2012, 2017.
After a successful period of competition, she also rebuilt her parents' house and has a good economy. At the awards ceremony on the evening of February 19, the girl from Long An considered this as a motivation to continue striving, and at the same time sent many special thanks, especially to her family. "Thank you, Mom and Dad, for giving birth to me and always being there for me during difficult times," Kim Thanh said, bursting into tears.
Mid-Autumn Festival
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