Vietnam U23 Land in Nagoya: A Relay Race With the Baton Still in Hand

At Nagoya airport, just past 5 a.m. local time on September 13, Thanh Nhan and his team-mates wheeled their luggage through customs. Vietnam U23 had departed at 00:15 the same day, spent roughly five hours in the air and touched down in Japan to open their Asiad 2026 campaign.

In athletics, the 4x100m relay carries a cruel rule: the fastest sprinter does not always decide the medal. The baton exchange, that tenth of a second when one hand searches for another, is where races are won and lost. Vietnam U23 are entering exactly that kind of relay, and the baton has not been fully handed over.

After airport formalities, the squad moved to the hotel arranged by the organisers. The first training session is scheduled for the afternoon of September 13, less than ten hours after landing in Nagoya.

Three matches, seven days, three kinds of football

Coach Dinh Hong Vinh's side sit in Group C alongside Uzbekistan, the Philippines and Kuwait. They meet Kuwait on September 15, the Philippines on September 18 and Uzbekistan on September 22.

Those three opponents represent three wildly different models. Kuwait play technical football, controlling midfield and hunting the space between the opponent's defensive lines. The Philippines press as a block, at high intensity, willing to engage deep in enemy territory. Uzbekistan are the physical benchmark of Central Asian football: strong in the air, sharp in transition and rarely out of position.

A normal U23 side needs three to four days to prepare for one style of opponent. Here, all three arrive inside seven days. The coaching staff's task is therefore no longer building a playing identity but erecting a skeleton solid enough that each match requires only a few adjustments.

Based on my experience watching matches at youth level, U23 teams usually lose not because they lack ideas, but because they run out of time to turn ideas into reflexes. Reflexes need repetition. Repetition needs time. Time is the one thing Nagoya does not sell.

Six SLNA players and a 4-1 win

Six SLNA players only joined the group after their club beat Ha Noi FC 4-1 in round two of the LPBank V-League 2026/27, then boarded the flight to Japan. In that match, Cao Van Binh kept good form in goal while Quang Vinh marked his name with a quick-fire double. Nguyen Quoc Toan (Quy Nhon) and Dang Tuan Phong (Hai Phong) will only arrive in Nagoya just before the opening fixture.

Reading those lines, most fans feel worried. My worry sits somewhere else.

The late arrivals carry something the early arrivals lack: real match rhythm. They played a competitive fixture only days ago, their bodies already activated, their feel for the ball intact. The group that gathered earlier trained without contact, played internal games, and sometimes lost the feel of duels.

The problem lies elsewhere: the window for a pressing block to move from understanding to automation is far shorter than the time Vietnam U23 actually have in Nagoya. A pressing system needs at least eight to ten sessions of full contact work before each line knows who covers whom. From September 13 to the Kuwait match on September 15, almost nothing remains.

The tactical consequences are clear. The team will struggle to sustain a high press, so the likely solution is economy: a mid-block, controlled concession of possession, and energy saved for transitions. With a back line not yet assembled, defending with numbers is safer than defending with distance.

Goalkeeper distribution matters too. Cao Van Binh's form allows the team to build short from the back, but short build-up demands full-backs who know when to push and when to tuck in. While those positional relationships are still forming, a long clearance is sometimes the mature decision.

Five substitutions, VAR and two things that ruin instinct

Five substitutions were once framed as a solution to congested calendars. They also turn the final twenty minutes into a war of attrition, where the deeper bench wins. In a centralised tournament like the Asian Games, the side keeping six or seven quality players on the bench holds a real edge in the last two matches.

Still, something else nags at me. If VAR appears from the knockout rounds with millimetre offside lines, young Asian teams will be pushed into safer football. A U23 striker who needs permission to run half a step early in order to learn the feeling will be punished by a line drawn on a screen. Referees are slowly becoming the editors of the match, and editors dislike chaos.

For a squad not yet assembled, chaos is sometimes the only friend available. 4-2-4 is not a formation; it is a test of who dares to dream. I am not suggesting Vietnam U23 field four forwards in Nagoya. I am only saying that a team arriving short of players and short of time should not tie itself up with beautiful principles.

The real worry is not the two late arrivals

An incomplete squad sounds like the biggest problem. I think it is merely the most visible one.

A team short of players is forced to simplify. That simplification, in many cases, produces a clearer structure. Conversely, a team with enough players but only a few days of shared life has too many options and too few common habits. Too many options is another kind of disorder, harder to see and harder to fix.

One signal I like: six SLNA players have just won 4-1. I also find that signal suspicious. A heavy win brings confidence, and confidence is good fuel for a young side. It also creates an illusion that everything is already fine. In youth football, the gap between confidence and complacency is as thin as a crossbar.

The opening match against Kuwait on September 15 is the most dangerous type of group-stage fixture. On paper, it is the weakest opponent in the group. In reality, it is the match where an unassembled team is most easily caught cold. Your opponent has trained together for weeks; you have only just reached full numbers.

I mispronounced a name three times live on air, but that did not make me wrong about myself. A team with a broken preparation is the same: the brokenness does not define them. How they respond to the brokenness does.

Looking forward

Nagoya will not answer whether Vietnam U23 have enough talent. It will only answer a narrower question: within seven days, can the coaching staff turn a collection of individuals into a block that knows where it stands?

If the team stays simple, endures the first two matches patiently and still has legs for Uzbekistan on September 22, this journey will mean more than any group-stage result. Football has always been a play of mistakes — I just help make it worth watching.

People remember champions. I will be watching something else: on September 13, in some hotel in Nagoya, more than twenty young players sitting at the same table for the first time, trying to remember each other's names. Every system begins with a name being called correctly.