Courtesy: Vietnam News.com

Viet Nam set sights on AFF Cup semi-finals


HA NOI — Head coach Nguyen Van Long has named a 15-strong quad for the Southeast Asian Futsal (indoor) Federation Championship in which Viet Nam are hoping to reach the semi-finals.

The final squad was selected from 21 players who had been training together for two weeks for the week-long event which kicks off on Saturday in Thailand.

Viet Nam are facing a tough opening game against defending champions Thailand next Monday. Their other rivals in group B are Brunei and Myanmar.

"Thailand are really strong rivals because the players are all skilful. They are under the coaching of a Brazilian and are getting physical training from a German expert," said Long.

Long, however, is quite positive about his team’s chances of reaching the knock out stages.

"Thailand are favourites to win the group so we are setting our sights on finishing in second place," he said.

The head coach said he had picked the most outstanding players from the 12 teams that had competed in the national championship last year in Da Nang.

"The team we have now is much better than the one we had two years ago as the national championship then was poorer in quality and had only eight teams, so we didn’t not have much choice," said Long.

Two years ago, former indoor players usually made up the Futsal team.

"Futsal rules are very different from the rules governing outdoor and players usually play in particular positions," explained Long. "In Futsal, players have to play in every position and rarely head the ball."

"In last year’s championship skill-levels were far more professional," he said.

"We lost to Brunei two years ago but we are a much better team now and have prepared well for the event."

For the first 10 days of training the Futsall squad worked on building up their physical strength. The remain time was spent on technical skills like controlling the ball and making breaks, he said.

"We are now just concentrating on sharpening out tactical skills in both attack and defence," said Long, adding that the players were showing good form during training.

After the AFF Futsal Cup, the team will return home ahead of training in May for the HCM City Futsal international tournament in June. The players will then spend two weeks training in Thailand ahead of the Asian Indoor Games in October and the Southeast Asian Games in December. — VNS



Posted by Luca Ranocchiari --> luca.ranocchiari@futsalplanet.com