Thu, 28 Oct, 2021
Manama: Coach Hoang Anh Tuan believes that his Vietnam team will face its strongest challenge at the AFC U-19 Championship Bahrain 2016 when they take on Japan in their semi-final match on Thursday but will come away with valuable experience, win or lose.
The young Golden stars joined Saudi Arabia, Islamic Republic of Iran and Japan in qualifying for the FIFA U-20 World Cup Korea Republic 2017 by reaching the last four of the competition, but this is now uncharted territory for them as they had never gone past the group stage in six previous attempts.
The unfancied team caused an upset in the quarter-finals by beating hosts Bahrain 1-0, as Tran Thanh’s second-half chip helped the Southeast Asian side make history. But now, they attempt to go one step further against vaunted opposition.
“Japan is a strong team, both at senior and youth level,” said Hoang. “They are one of the strongest sides in Asia. As far as I’m concerned, they are the strongest team in this year’s competition.
“In the qualifiers and the quarter-finals, they have scored a total of 10 goals and conceded none. This not only shows their attacking strength, but proves their defence is good too.
“Tomorrow’s game is a difficult game for us but we are ready to play. There is nothing to lose, we will play and try to win with determination. It is just one more game and we will go again with passion.
“After this game, whether we win or lose is not a problem, what’s important is that we learn from each other.”
Opponents Japan dominated their quarter-final match against Tajikistan on Monday, powering past their opponents in a decisive 4-0 win.
This broke a streak of four quarter-final exits for the team, and coach Atsushi Uchiyama is determined to go all the way and clinch the nation’s first AFC U-19 Championship title.
Despite their undoubted pedigree, the young Samurai Blue have never won the competition, having finished in second place on six different occasions – the last of which came in 2006 when they lost out to DPR Korea.
“We had two main goals coming into this competition,” said Uchiyama after training on Wednesday. “The first was to qualify for the U-20 World Cup next year which we have already achieved.
“The next target is to clinch the AFC U-19 title and so we will try our best to win against Vietnam tomorrow and get to the final because it would be good to go to the World Cup next year as Asian champions.
“My impression of the Vietnam team is that they are very individually skilled and play an aggressive style of football but we will also try to play aggressive tomorrow and do our best to win.”
Photo: AFC