Three Training Sessions, Seven Missing Names, and the Hidden Move of Coach Kim Sang Sik

It was a late afternoon on the training pitch, and I stood at the edge of a small stand, looking down. The ball rolled to Hoang Duc's feet; he paused for a beat, then squared it to a young face whose name took me several seconds to recall. Twenty metres away, the other group repeated a wide combination drill over and over. Nobody raised their voice. The coaching staff's whistle rang out steadily, dry and clipped, like the drumbeat of a ceremony that had not yet reached its opening hour.

I go to the pitch to keep the rhythm of stories, not to score goals. And the story of that afternoon was not on the tactics board. It was in the fact that Hoang Duc trained apart, that several familiar names were absent, and that the whole squad had exactly three sessions before stepping into a regional tournament opener.

Vietnam's biggest concern lies in the number of training sessions, not in the name Philippines.

The group-stage opener falls in late September, and Kim Sang Sik has stated plainly that his team has won every match since he took charge. It is a handsome line, and not untrue. But for anyone who has sat in this trade long enough, such winning runs are usually measured in friendlies or against lesser opposition, not in a regional opener — where the grass is not as soft as at home, the referee's whistle is unfamiliar, and the weight of the stands is many times heavier.

Behind the Philippines match lies Thailand on 29 September. That is the fixture the coaching staff are truly looking at. But to walk into Thailand with a comfortable footing, Vietnam must take all three points from the Philippines. On paper, no other outcome is considered acceptable.

The difficulty sits in a squad missing its controllers. Quang Hai is out. Thanh Chung is out. Doan Van Hau is out. Hoang Duc trains separately — and when a pivotal central midfielder trains separately before the opener, the probability of him starting from the first minute is very low. A team can lose one centre-back and cope. Losing the organiser and the defensive leader at the same time is a different matter entirely.

That is why a preparation compressed into three sessions is so troubling. One session in Hanoi, two in Bandung. Three sessions are not enough to install a new pressing system, nor to test a shape nobody has learned. Three sessions are only enough to restate old principles and patch the gaps.

Historically, Vietnam hold an almost absolute advantage. Since the 2026 AFF Cup, the Philippines have never beaten Vietnam: six defeats, one draw, no wins. At youth level, Vietnam's U23 side has also beaten the Philippines U23 at the Asian Games. This is verifiable head-to-head data, and it is real.

But head-to-head data measures the past. It does not measure the squad Carles Cuadrat is bringing this time.

The Philippines have called up 14 new players, nine of whom play in Europe and the Americas. Kristensen and Rasmussen are the most notable names in attack. In their previous outing they beat Laos 4-1. This is a team being rebuilt in a fundamentally different direction: instead of relying on domestic players, they are widening their pool to the diaspora and to faces born and raised abroad.

This trend is not unique to the Philippines. The whole of Southeast Asia is doing the same, and it has made the gaps between regional national teams far harder to read than in the era when I first entered the trade — an era when a strong side beating a weak one could be forecast a week in advance.

When the new media clamour at the door, I still hear the old drums from the stands. And those drums tell me that a team with 14 new faces, nine of them from abroad, may lack cohesion — but may also bring things that old footage cannot record. A defender who has never faced Vietnam. A striker who has never feared the name Vietnam.

On Vietnam's side, the goal-scoring hope rests almost entirely on Dinh Bac and Xuan Son. Two men, one spearhead. It is a reasonable plan, but also one easily read if the midfield lacks the numbers to feed them. I have watched too many matches where a team leaned on a striking pair, then stalled in the second half as the opponent dropped deep and cut every square pass.

Kim Sang Sik says there will be a surprise. I believe he has an idea. But with three sessions and a depleted midfield, that surprise may not be an ornate tactical invention. It may simply be a survival measure: promoting a young player to the XI, pushing a wide midfielder inside, or accepting a lower block and waiting for set-piece chances.

A stadium can change its name, but the singing of the stands is never copyrighted. Vietnamese fans will still arrive expecting a win, and there is nothing wrong with that. What I would say to the young writers covering this match is to watch the starting line-up rather than only reading historical scorelines. Khoa Ngo and Williams Minh Hoang are two names that could appear, and if they do, that is a signal the midfield is being patched in a different way.

One more thing must be said plainly: the information about this year's competition format is inconsistent. Some sources claim only the group winner advances to the final, whereas the familiar format of this regional competition is a semi-final round. This is a detail that needs verification through the organisers' official documents before anyone concludes how important each match is. I once mispronounced a player's name on air and was reminded of it for weeks. Since then I have kept one rule: what cannot be verified should not be used as the foundation for a judgement.

The match against the Philippines is therefore not a verdict on this team. It is a test of the coaching staff's capacity to adapt. A narrow win is still three points. A draw will turn the Thailand fixture into an early final. And a defeat will open a very long debate about why a national team could prepare so little for a regional tournament.

I will sit in the stands, note the starting line-up, and wait to see what Kim Sang Sik's surprise is. Not to catch him out, but to understand. Southeast Asian football is changing, and matches like this are where that change shows its face earliest — before the standings have had time to say anything at all.