U23 Vietnam at Asiad 2026: Three Identical Matches and the Missing Anchor

There was a red scarf left on the step of the Eastern Stand. No one picked it up. After U23 Vietnam's match against U23 Uzbekistan at Asiad 2026, once the stands had emptied and the noise had dissolved into the murmur of the ground staff, the scarf was still there, red like a smear of paint on grey concrete. I stood looking at it for a long while. People tend to recount a defeat through scorelines, through goals, through shots missed. But I do not believe that match was decided there. It was decided in the gaps — the gaps no one closed, the gaps the opponent had spotted before the referee even blew the opening whistle. That night, U23 Vietnam lost 0-2. And if you read only the scoreline, you will miss almost the entire story. Because what happened on the pitch was not an accident. It was a pattern. A pattern repeated three times, against three different opponents, across a single group stage. And like any pattern, it does not vanish when the match ends. It stays behind, waiting, right at the moment the team steps into the knockout round. Let me start with a confession about method. This article draws on statements by former international Nguyen Tuan Phong in the press, alongside what I observed across three group matches. No independent measured data has been published — no expected goals, no shot counts, no pressing index. That means every conclusion below is expert opinion, not validated measurement. The distinction matters, because Vietnamese football is at a point where feeling and figures are blended so thoroughly that evidence and anxiety are no longer separable. U23 Vietnam entered Asiad 2026 with a back three. Three central defenders, two advanced wing-backs, and ahead of them a vast open space. This is not a bold tactical invention. It is the structure countless youth sides in the region have adopted in recent years, for a very pragmatic reason: it allows a team to hold the ball, control midfield, and apply pressure from both flanks. It looks beautiful on a tactics board. But it has a price, and that price was paid in full throughout the group stage under coach Dinh Hong Vinh. The first cost was human. Nhat Minh and Hieu Minh, the two centre-backs understood to be first choice, could not play. This forced the coaching staff to introduce new defenders — Duc Anh, Le Nguyen Hoang, and Pham Ly Duc. Those three names, however promising, had never stood beside each other long enough to understand one another by instinct. And in a back-three system, instinctive understanding is not a luxury. It is a condition of survival. The three centre-backs must move as a single block, cover for one another with every breath, know who advances, who drops, who fills the space the other leaves. Tuan Phong put it bluntly: those defenders did not cover for each other. That is not a personal criticism. It is a description of a system thrown into the fire before it could set. The second cost, and perhaps the more serious one, was the absence of a genuine defensive midfielder. In a back three, you do not need three outstanding centre-backs as much as you need someone to shield them. The anchor. A holding midfielder who reads the game, cuts passing lanes, and covers for the outside centre-backs when they are dragged wide. The kind of player Tuan Phong calls the Thai Son type — someone who does not need to stand out, only to be in the right place. The current U23 Vietnam does not have that player. And seemingly, in the pundit's phrasing, the team has not found a way to produce one. In place of that anchor, the team fielded two attack-oriented central midfielders — Xuan Bac and Nguyen Thai Quoc Cuong. This is an understandable choice: both can carry the ball, pass it, and join attacks. But when both push forward, the space ahead of the back three opens like an unlocked door. The opponent needs only one line-breaking pass to run straight into the heart of the defence. Uzbekistan did exactly that. Not once. Many times, half after half, until the Eastern Stand could no longer shout and could only hold its breath. And the person who suffered most was Le Dinh Long Vu. Long Vu's left channel was where the opponent attacked relentlessly in the first half. This must be said clearly to avoid a damaging misunderstanding: Long Vu is not a bad player. He is a player placed in an unwinnable situation. As a wing-back in a back three, he is asked to push high to provide attacking width — but also to retreat in time to defend. When the opponent plays the ball long behind him, he must sprint back across the pitch, often alone, often while the centre-back behind him is still turning his head. It is a physics problem with no solution if the system has no one to compensate. The half-time substitution — Phi Hoang entering the game — improved the situation. This is a positive signal worth noting. It shows the coaching staff can read a match and correct it in real time. But it also raises a question that is not easy to answer: why was the problem not anticipated? Why did it take more than half a first half of a breached left flank before a solution appeared? Reaction existed. Proactivity did not. What remains is the story of the goals that never came. This is the part that troubles me most, because it appeared in all three matches. Three identical matches. The same script: the team controls the ball well, passes smoothly, creates a game state — but does not score, or scores too little, while conceding in situations that could have been avoided. In one match, you can call it misfortune. In two, coincidence. In three, it is no longer misfortune or coincidence. It is a characteristic. That fire still burns; it has simply learned to whisper. The team still plays, still holds the rhythm, still lets the viewer feel the ambition. But that fire is burning in a room with no exit. Possession without an end product is control stripped of its purpose. Football does not award points for elegance. It awards points for balls that cross the line. And here is where I want to say something that may irritate many people. People often describe U23 Vietnam's problem as missed chances. But missed chances is an easy phrase, because it assumes the chances truly existed. I doubt that. What I saw across three matches was not a team repeatedly standing before an empty goal and shooting over. It was a team producing many situations but very few genuinely dangerous ones. Shots from distance. Shots under pressure. Crosses into the box with no clear target. There is a vast difference between the quantity of chances and the quality of chances. And no data in Tuan Phong's comments lets us determine which one the team lacks. One detail deserves a place on the table: the absence of Dinh Bac. In the attack, he is the player capable of creating a moment on his own — the kind who can receive the ball in a position no one thought possible, turn, and convert an ordinary situation into a dangerous one. Without him, the attack loses its reference point. The attacking system, therefore, is no longer a system, but the scattered efforts of individuals trying to do what they were not born to do. Every pass is an unfinished poem, and the goal is a blank page — but the page does not write itself. Now let us return to the bigger picture, because looking only at these three matches will misread the nature of the problem. U23 Vietnam does not exist in isolation at a tournament. The team sits inside a system — the youth development system of Vietnamese football, the system from which players are born, nurtured, and pushed up to the senior side. And one thing stands out: when the team lacked centre-backs, new names had to be introduced before they were tested. When the team lacked a defensive midfielder, there was no one to bring in — in Tuan Phong's words, the team seemingly cannot find one. But when the team needs an attacker in the Dinh Bac mould, it has Dinh Bac. That imbalance is not the story of a single tournament. It is the story of an entire footballing nation. The ghost in the Eastern Stand never leaves; it only changes shirts. That ghost is not the memory of one specific defeat. It is the memory of a recurring gap, generation after generation, under different names, in different kits. A back three with no shield has been a question for a very long time. And the answer, to date, remains unwritten. Across the touchline, U23 Uzbekistan is rated a class side. The way Tuan Phong calls them — a class team — is a deliberate phrasing. It is not only respect. It is simultaneously an admission of the gap and a way to soften the result. When you lose to a class team, you lose something more bearable than losing to yourself. Behind this framing, something is being prepared: an early acknowledgement that the knockout round may be hard. In the silent applause, I hear the heartbeat of the match most clearly. Before the Uzbekistan match, the U23 Vietnam stands throughout the tournament had a particular sound: not as loud as the big senior-team matches, not as fevered as SEA Games finals, but a steady, patient applause, as if those sitting there knew something the team itself did not seem to know: that everything would be difficult, and they were here to witness it, not to hide from it. And here is where I want to return to a question I consider central to the whole story. The return of the back three in this match is presented as a tactical choice. But I do not believe it is a choice. I believe it is a way to avoid reputational risk. Think about this: when a team is breached through a back four, the coach faces a direct question. Why not mark tighter? Why not drop deeper? But when a team plays three centre-backs, the coach has a shield: the system. The system needs time. The system needs personnel. The system is still forming. Those answers sound reasonable, and in many cases they may be correct. But they also serve another function: they postpone judgment. And in modern football, postponing judgment is worth money. I am not saying the back three is a mistake. I am saying the back three is being used as a shield for unresolved problems, and that this can make those problems harder to see rather than easier. The fire still burns; it has simply learned to whisper, and a whisper is harder to hear than a shout. At the same time, another story is unfolding on the sidelines, and it matters too. People have begun comparing the current team with the side under coach Kim Sang Sik. And in those comparisons, the current U23 Vietnam is judged weaker. This is a very strange thing in sport. Because in most cases, successive teams are not compared so directly — different generations, different ages, different opponents. But in Vietnam, this comparison has become a habit. Every new team is measured against the yardstick of an old one. And of course, the old team always wins in some way, because it has completed its journey and we know where it ended. Tuan Phong, who has spoken candidly about this team, touched on this. He said the current squad is weaker than itself in the past. That is a very strong claim. And my question is: who is that past self? When? At which tournament? Against which opponents? Because if this year's team cannot match last year's, what does that mean? It means progress has reversed. Or it means we are comparing teams at different stages of a development cycle, and the comparison is meaningless. I have no answer. But I think it is important to admit the answer is not obvious. Now, one more thing must be said. When this team enters the knockout round, it will face opponents with strong midfields and superior physicality. This is not a prediction. It is a description of the tournament. Asian youth football in the knockout phase is characterised by one thing: a surge in physical intensity. Teams that survive this pressure are usually those with stable defensive organisation and rapid transition. Teams that rely on possession as defence — the kind that defends by keeping the ball — often struggle. And here is what I believe but cannot prove with numbers: U23 Vietnam stands at a very thin boundary. If the defence is repaired — if Nhat Minh and Hieu Minh return, if a defensive midfielder is positioned correctly, if the attack finds a way to create quality chances rather than quantity — this team can produce a surprise. Not because they are strong. But because they can play correctly. And in knockout football, playing correctly is sometimes everything. If the defence is not repaired, if the attack keeps producing harmless situations, and if the physical capacity is insufficient to withstand the intensity, this team will be eliminated in a way that will later be explained with the phrase "just not enough". People call it defeat; I call it a draft of victory. But a draft only becomes a manuscript if someone sits down and revises it. Otherwise, it remains a crumpled sheet, filed in some drawer, and sometimes, when opened, will reappear in another match, in another shirt, under another name. So the question is: does this team have that someone? Is there anyone willing to look into that gap — not to paint it over, but to fill it — or not? The pitch after the final whistle is a strange stage. Everything considered important — goals, points, scorelines — has departed. But something remains. A shadow. A silence. A red scarf no one picks up on the step. I left the stadium that night thinking about this. Not about the defeat. But about what did not happen in that defeat, and what might have happened if someone had seen the gap before the opponent did. U23 Vietnam reached the quarterfinals. That is a good thing. But in football as in literature, what matters is not how far you walked. What matters is what you left on the road. And what Vietnamese football left on the road to the Asiad 2026 quarterfinals, at least as seen across three group matches, is not goals. It is a question: when will this team finally have an anchor?