Vietnam competes for the top spot with Australia, but host Indonesia plays dirty tricks again

After the U-16 Southeast Asian tournament, Indonesia continues to host the U-19 Southeast Asian Championship (from July 17 to 29). Coach Hua Hien Vinh and his team of U-19 Vietnam will compete for the top spot with Australia in Group B along with Myanmar and Laos, in which Laos is the reigning runner-up and Myanmar is not weak at this age.

Host Indonesia played a trick similar to the U-16 Southeast Asian tournament by arranging for their team to play three group stage matches at 7:30 p.m., while most of their opponents played at 3 p.m. Indonesia continued to “design” the semi-final schedule, giving them four days off before the semi-final, while their opponents only got one day off. This is a strange and unsportsmanlike story, even a violation of international football organization rules, but the football federations of the countries that are members of the AFF did not speak up to correct it.

In the three U-19 Southeast Asian groups, host Indonesia took the lead in Group A, while Vietnam competed with Australia, Myanmar and Laos, the current runners-up. In Group C, defending champions Malaysia and Thailand fought each other for the top spot, and then only had one day off before playing the semi-finals.

As for the host Indonesia, it seems they also lack some self-respect when arranging such an ugly schedule for the youth playground.

In the recent U-16 tournament, Indonesia played dirty and the result was "man proposes, God disposes". Indonesia failed to reach the finals and also got a bad reputation. Now in the U-19 tournament, they continue to show this behavior.

Who would have thought that a traditional youth tournament that takes place every two years would have such a terrible schedule? The opponents only get one day off before the semi-finals, while the hosts... four days? The hosts have some favors, but this kind of favor is only found in the "lowest areas" of world football.

"Designing" the final match schedule, the teams in group C including Thailand, Malaysia... who are Indonesia's semi-final opponents only have 1 day off, while Indonesia has 4 days off.

For Southeast Asian youth teams, the U-16 and U-19 tournaments are a preparation for them to play in the Asian qualifiers in September and October.

In the two qualifying rounds of U-16 and U-19 Asia, the Vietnamese youth teams were both chosen as "group leaders", meaning they played centrally in Vietnam.

With U-19 Vietnam, coach Hua Hien Vinh and his team are luckier than coach Tran Minh Chien and his team of U-16 Vietnam.

To prepare for the Southeast Asian tournament from mid-July, the Vietnam U-19 team was also given the opportunity by the VFF to go to China to play a very high-quality international friendly tournament with the U-19s of China, South Korea and Uzbekistan. As a result, Vietnam lost all three matches. However, facing three extremely strong teams, Hua Hien Vinh and his team learned and gained valuable experience for the ultimate goal this year, which is to get a ticket to the U-19 Asian finals.

At the U-19 Southeast Asian tournament that started on July 17, Vietnam was in Group B with Australia, Myanmar and Laos. This situation was determined that Vietnam would compete with Australia for the top spot to get a ticket to the semi-finals.

Vietnam U-19 in the match against host China U-19 at the Huashan Cup national friendly tournament.

Group A includes host Indonesia, East Timor, the Philippines and Cambodia. It is easy to see that coach Bima Sakti and his team of Indonesia have the easiest time in Group A. They then have four days off before entering the semi-finals to face Group C opponents who only have one day off.

Currently, the reigning U-19 Southeast Asian champions are Malaysia. Two years ago in Indonesia, Malaysia defeated Vietnam 3-0 in the semi-finals and reached the final, defeating Laos 2-0.

Ho Chi Minh City Law Newspaper

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