SO IT wasn’t unexpected that the Philippines squad bowed out of the 2020 AFC U23 Qualifications without a win.
But since nobody wants to be reminded that something’s wrong with the country’s football program when your team loses to minnows like Laos in an important tournament, then might as well change the topic.
Instead, let’s talk about our neighbor Vietnam, which topped its group in the qualifiers held in Hanoi ahead of Thailand, Indonesia and Brunei. Vietnam will join Thailand in the 2020 AFC Championship.
One might say that Vietnam got lucky to be drawn into a relatively easy group against fellow Southeast Asians. However, let’s not forget that Vietnam became the toast of the 2018 AFC Championship where as, the most unexpected of darkhorses, the team went all the way to the final, eventually losing to Uzbekistan.
Such was the Vietnamese team’s feat that their countrymen poured into a stretch of 30 kilometers of road to welcome them as heroes. What an incredible year for the Vietnamese nation.
And it didn’t end there. Vietnams’s senior team went on to win the AFF Suzuki Cup last December. Then last January, it was the best-performing Southeast Asian team in the prestigious AFC Cup, having made it as far as the quarterfinal before losing to eventual runners-up Japan with a 1-0 scoreline.
Despite the loss, Vietnam can proudly say it can now stand shoulder to shoulder with the traditional giants of Asian football. Obviously, Vietnam’s rise to the regional stage didn’t happen overnight.
An article from Esquire Singapore attributes the team’s recent success to a grassroots program borne in the central highlands of Vietnam, away from the trappings of the country’s urban areas.
Entitled “The Rise of Vietnamese Football,” the article pointed to a sports academy in the province of Gia Lai that was formed in collaboration with English club Arsenal, a French academy, and a Vietnamese conglomerate that owns the V League club Hoang Anh Gia Lai FC.
With its success, the academy became a model that other groups in the country followed. A Vietnamese in Hanoi recently told me there are now at least two academies in the capital.
The academy model isn’t unique, of course – Malaysia has at least one – but what set Vietnam to the right path and slay is the mystery.
Last December, I had the opportunity to catch a glimpse of Vietnamese life from Saigon in the south to Da Nang in the center to Hanoi up north. I’ve noticed that Vietnam now enjoys plenty of the elements needed for football to thrive.
One is a rapidly growing economy that is evenly spread. With more money going around, football leagues across the land become sustainable.
Also, no program would make sense without popular support, and Vietnam, a certified football country, has plenty of it. In football-literate Vietnam, the sport is everywhere: children playing kickabout in any open space, restobar patrons watching matches on TV.