Facing Kyrgyzstan in the play-off semi-finals, the Vietnamese futsal team resiliently equalized 2-2 after allowing the opponent to take the lead twice. The decision to use power-play (all-out play, goalkeeper rising) was unsuccessful, causing Vietnam to stop with a loss of 2-3.
At that goal, coach Diego Giustozzi and his team created a good opportunity in front of the Central Asian team’s goal, but Anh Duy could not convert the close-range opportunity and allowed the opponent to counterattack and score into an empty net.
Looking back from the beginning of the 2024 Asian Finals to this match, the Vietnamese futsal team continuously failed to take advantage of scoring opportunities. That also caused coach Diego Giustozzi and his team to enter the round of “elimination tickets” to the World Cup when they lost to Uzbekistan in the quarterfinals.
The attack was not effective partly due to the absence of key players due to injury, including Nguyen Minh Tri – a veteran player with two World Cup appearances.
With the play-off format, matches will not have extra time. This probably caused coach Diego Giustozzi to make the wrong decision when trying to push his students to win in the official 40 minutes.
The Vietnamese futsal team lost in the final minutes when the power-play strategy was exploited by the opponent
According to this expert, the opponent proactively power-plays first. The Vietnamese team can proactively defend, but he appreciates being able to create the best settlement situation when playing 5 people in the last minutes. However, not taking advantage of the opportunity well caused the team to be counterattacked and pay the price.
The Argentine military leader’s decision to go “all in” came as a surprise to many people. This coach himself, after the quarter-final loss to Uzbekistan, admitted that he did not like to use power-play tactics even though he was behind and only liked fair 4-on-4 play.
Tactical miscalculations and not taking advantage of scoring opportunities forced the Vietnamese futsal team to give up their third chance to participate in the World Cup finals. It must be known that Vietnam’s great strength in recent years is in the wooden goal – the place dominated by the former top 10 goalkeeper in the world – Ho Van Y. If the match can lead to a penalty shootout from a distance of 6 meters, the Vietnamese futsal team can be completely assured of support in the goal.
In history, Ho Van Y won the penalty shootout against Myanmar in the Southeast Asian arena to win the bronze medal, a ticket to the 2022 Asian finals.
However, the Vietnamese futsal team’s participation in the quarterfinals is also a success by defending its position in the No. 1 seed group in Asia. Because of this year’s tournament, Japanese futsal was eliminated from the group stage and will fall to group 2.
That makes the next tournament more likely to have a group of death consisting of group 1 teams with Japan (group 2) and Indonesia (group 3) – a team that is developing rapidly and is an annoying opponent of Vietnam and Thailand. in Southeast Asia in recent years.
Tags: Vietnamese Futsal disillusioned
