75 Minutes of Deadlock, a Black Shirt, and the Real Ceiling of Vietnam U23 Before Uzbekistan

Minute 74, when the ball finally crossed the Philippines goal line, I was sitting in my office reviewing the handwritten data sheet I had kept for over an hour. Not the goal. The zero in the "quality chances" column during the first 60 minutes. A match in which Vietnam U23 dominated possession almost entirely, pinned the opponent back, created a string of situations, yet only broke through the human wall the Philippines built on minute 74. It is a moment anyone following Southeast Asian youth football knows too well: the stronger team holds the ball, the weaker team defends with numbers, and the match hangs by a thread until a mistake or a flash of brilliance settles everything. But the story Vietnamese media remembered most after the match was not the goal. It was the black shirt. Coach Dinh Hong Vinh recalled that his players asked him to wear black, and he happily obliged. "Listening to my students, wearing black really did bring luck," he said. A small, charming detail, easy to spread. But for me, someone who has spent nearly three decades in press rooms, that detail is both a positive cultural signal and a gentle curtain concealing an unresolved tactical problem. This article does not aim to diminish a real victory. Four points from two matches is a solid result. But if we stop at the "lucky black shirt," we will walk into the Uzbekistan match carrying a decorated belief rather than a verified understanding. And football, as I tell the young reporters in my training classes, does not reward blind faith. It rewards preparation. CONTEXT: A GROUP BUILT ON DIFFERENT CONDITIONS Before dissecting anything, we need to place the match in its proper frame. Vietnam U23 are in Group C of the men's football at Asiad 2026, alongside the Philippines, Kuwait, and Uzbekistan. After two rounds, Dinh Hong Vinh's side has four points, with a 2-0 win over the Philippines and a previous result keeping them in a favorable position. The final match against Uzbekistan is decisive for top spot or at least a ticket to the next round. One point must be stated plainly: the entire competition timeline, including the Asian Games age format, the Group C progression criteria, and the dates mentioned, belong to the category of information that needs verification from official sources. I say this not to reduce the value of the analysis, but because I have seen too many young commentary pieces build an entire story from an unconfirmed detail. Data discipline begins with having the courage to say "I am not sure." What is certain lies in the nature of the opponents. The Philippines, as we saw, is a team that deliberately chooses to defend deep, pulling numbers back into their own half. Uzbekistan, as the analysis team describes, is a methodical side with good technique and superior physical foundations. Between these two opponents lies a gap in level that anyone who has watched Asian youth football understands. Group C is therefore not a flat group. It is a group with two different peaks: one "must break the block" and one "must face physicality." And Vietnam U23, after the Philippines match, has solved the first peak, but in a way that made me record it carefully in my notebook before sleeping: it took 74 minutes. TACTICAL ANALYSIS: THE LOW-BLOCK PROBLEM AND THE PRICE OF PATIENCE In modern football, when a team builds a "low block," they are not simply retreating. They compress the distances between lines, accept conceding possession in midfield, turn their own half into a densely populated corridor, and bet that the stronger team will lack either the patience or the sharpness to find a gap. The Philippines did exactly that. They did not come to trade blows. They came to lock the match in a box and wait. The first thing to emphasize is this: Vietnam U23 controlled the game but failed to convert control into quality chances for most of the match. This is characteristic of a phenomenon analysts call "sterile domination" — holding the ball a lot, pushing the opponent back, creating a sense of dominance, yet lacking truly penetrating passes, lacking situations where the opposing goalkeeper must dive, and most importantly, lacking chances we could call "must-score." I watched the Philippines match situations several times. What caught my attention was not the number of shots, but where those shots came from. A team good at breaking a low block must constantly push the ball into the channel between full-back and center-back, must stretch the defensive block by switching play from flank to flank fast enough that the opponent cannot shift in time, and must have at least one player daring to surge into the box at the right moment. If there is only circulation without penetration, the ball will travel around the block like water around a stone — still not seeping in. The truth is that in the first 60 minutes, Vietnam U23 seemed not to have found a way through that dense defense via the short route. They held the ball, kept the rhythm, waited. Patience is a virtue. But patience without variation becomes deadlock. And deadlock, in a match where the opponent only needs to hold on, is a gift handed to them. The 74th-minute goal therefore carries two opposing meanings at once. It is both a reward for persistence and a warning about the cost of 74 minutes without a breakthrough. The second goal on minute 86 came quickly after — only 12 minutes after the opener. This is a familiar sign I often call "the dam breaking." Once the wall has been breached once, the opponent must open up to find an equalizer, and that opening itself creates space for the next goal. The interval between the two goals is compressed, and the match suddenly falls into place. But we need to read this sign soberly. The two goals arriving close together does not prove the team has truly understood how to break a low block. It only proves the team was patient enough to seize the first moment when the opponent made a mistake or exposed a gap. A 74th-minute goal after nearly 75 minutes of deadlock is a sign of patience, but also a sign that the positional attack structure is not yet sharp enough. This is what I want you to remember before moving to the section on Xuan Bac. XUAN BAC: THE RHYTHM-KEEPER, NOT JUST THE SCORER There is a detail in the way the match was narrated that made me pause for a long time. The second goal was described not as the product of the scorer, but as the product of a ball recovery turning into a counterattack by Xuan Bac. Read quickly, this detail seems small. But for someone in my profession, it says a great deal about this player's real role in the system. Xuan Bac is described not as a pure creative number 10, but as a box-to-box midfielder who drops to win the ball and then drives the transition from defense to attack. He is the man at the intersection of two phases. When the team needs to recover the ball, he is there. When the team needs to launch an attack, he is the first to push the ball out of the pressure zone. This is the type of midfielder every modern system needs, and the type Vietnamese youth teams have often lacked in recent years. But seen from another angle, there is something worrying. If the team depends on a single person to win the ball and initiate play, then when that person is absent or marked out, the machine will stall. Vietnam U23 is operating with a centralized creative point, and that is a structural risk, not merely an individual weakness. In a short tournament with a dense schedule, loading the burden onto one player is the path to accumulated fatigue and moments of collapse exactly when we most need stability. Interestingly, Xuan Bac is also mentioned as a spiritual leader, a man with great influence in the dressing room. He matures through each tournament and is recognized as having played well under coach Kim Sang Sik. But the pitch has no room for bias — only the ball, the tactics, and who dares to stand up. Xuan Bac's leadership role must be judged by whether he shows up at the moments the team needs most, not merely by praise. And the Philippines match, at least in the moment of the second goal, is proof that he showed up. This is what I want to emphasize: I am not heroizing Xuan Bac. A player has the right to be tired, to doubt, to fail. But when a player carries the role of an entire system on his shoulders, the question is not "is he good enough," but "is the system placing too much on him." And from what I see, the answer leans toward the latter. This part is for match video: I watched fairly closely Xuan Bac's recoveries. Notably, he often tackles just as the opposing midfielder receives and turns, meaning exactly when the opponent loses balance. This is a high-level reading skill, not something that can be trained quickly in a few weeks. THE BLACK SHIRT: A CULTURAL SIGNAL WORTH RESPECTING Now to the story the whole country remembers. Players asked coach Dinh Hong Vinh to wear black for luck. He agreed. After the match, he joked that wearing black really did bring luck. Read on the surface, this is a fun story, a human detail that makes the team feel close. But for me, someone who has witnessed not a few dressing rooms shattered by distance between coach and players, this detail has greater value. When players dare to ask their coach for something belonging to a small belief, and the coach happily obliges, it proves something rare: power in the dressing room is being operated through trust, not imposition. During a period when a team is led by an interim coach, this trust matters many times more, because the authority of an interim is never as solid as that of a permanent one. Every decision is scrutinized. Every word is weighed. Without the players' trust, an interim coach collapses at the first difficulty. But I must also say what few commentaries dare to say. The "luck" excuse is quietly hiding a truth. If the team played 74 minutes of deadlock, if chances were not converted early, if the attacking structure depends on a single creative point, then the black shirt cannot fix those problems. It only colors a victory, and risks being used to avoid facing a hard question: against Uzbekistan, is the black shirt lucky enough to cover the tactical gaps? I once wrote something I still believe: we must listen to the data, not to what is easy to hear. The data from the Philippines match says the team was patient and won, but also says the positional attack efficiency was not high. Both are true. The problem with the media is that we tend to select only the easy-to-hear to tell. DINH HONG VINH: THE MAN AT THE CROSSROADS OF TWO STORIES Dinh Hong Vinh is not a name appearing for the first time on the bench of youth teams. He is the man who has repeatedly replaced coach Kim Sang Sik when the Korean strategist was busy with national team duties. In other words, he is the "man in between" — someone who understands the youth team system well, but who has never truly been handed the long-term keys. This is a peculiar management structure I call "stable but ambiguous stewardship." It has advantages: the VFF maintains continuity of philosophy, the youth team does not have to rebuild from scratch on every personnel change, and a man like Vinh can transition smoothly between campaigns. But it also has a major drawback: no one is clear who is truly responsible long-term for the U23 project, and any negative result can open a "interim or permanent" debate that goes nowhere. The way Vinh spoke about the victory also shows he reads the team's psychology well. He called the Philippines win a "mental stepping stone" before the decisive match. This is a clever word choice: he did not say the team has peaked, but that it has enough confidence to step into a harder match. That is how a coach protects his players' psychological capital — an emotional management skill not every strategist possesses. What I noticed most about Vinh, and what I want to sincerely praise: he gave high priority to rest and recovery before the Uzbekistan match. In a context where many young coaches are swept up in extra training, extra tactics, and forget that the legs decide the match, recognizing the importance of fitness is correct vision. He understands the Uzbekistan match may be decided not by the tactics board but by whether the legs are still fresh. But right here, the hard question appears. If the Uzbekistan match is lost, will Vinh's interim tenure be questioned regarding his long-term coaching ability? And if he is questioned that way, it is unfair, because he was placed in a game where the result is decided more by the opponent's strength than the manager's ability. I will not jump to conclusions. But I will watch how the Vietnamese media handles this story after the decisive match. THE REAL OPPONENT: UZBEKISTAN AND WHAT IS MOST FEARED The Philippines is a problem. Uzbekistan is an exam. What we know about Uzbekistan at U23 level, per the analysis team, is a methodical team with good technique and superior physical foundations. This is no accident of Central Asian football. Uzbek football has built a proper youth development system over decades, focused on physicality, basic technique, and tactical organization from a very young age. They do not rely on one standout individual. They rely on a sustainable system. What makes Uzbekistan more fearsome than the Philippines is not that they are technically stronger, but that they do not give us time to be patient. The Philippines gave us 75 minutes to try, to fail, and finally to find a gap. Uzbekistan will not give us that time. They will force us to play in uncomfortable areas, they will make every attack cost sweat, and they will punish moments of lost focus with goals exactly when we think we control the match. From a structural angle, this is a challenge with three layers. The first is physical: if Uzbekistan is stronger in duels and speed, Vietnam U23 will have to endure in 50-50 challenges, and every lost challenge can lead to an opponent chance. The second is organization: a methodical team will not expose gaps easily, so the block-breaking problem may be harder than the Philippines match. The third is psychological: after two positive matches, domestic expectations have risen, and a young team can tense up under that weight of expectation. However, there is an offsetting factor I want to emphasize. It is coach Dinh Hong Vinh's experience facing Uzbek football. He has repeatedly faced this team with youth sides, and familiarity with the Uzbek style is an invisible asset. At high-level football, knowing what the opponent will do in which situation is worth as much as an advantage in personnel. It cannot erase the physical gap, but it can help us position the lineup correctly, prevent the right situations, and seize the right moments. A CONTRARIAN VIEW: LUCK OR STRUCTURE? Now I want to say what may make some people uncomfortable. The truth is, the win over the Philippines does not prove Vietnam U23 has solved its core problem. It proves they were patient enough and lucky enough to seize the mistake of a weaker opponent. If we read this victory as a sign of tactical maturity, we are fooling ourselves. This is why I always emphasize reading process data, not just results. The 2-0 scoreline is beautiful. But the scoreline does not tell us how many quality chances the team created, how much possession it had, where it pressed, and how it broke the block. Without those data, we can only say the team won, not that the team improved. And here is the paradox of Vietnamese sports media. When the team wins, we find every way to beautify the story. When the team loses, we find every way to find someone responsible. Both are emotional reactions, not analyses. If I wrote this article emotionally, I could easily praise the lucky black shirt and create a widely shared piece. But I have worked in this profession for nearly three decades, and I have learned that a writer's value lies in daring to say what needs saying, not what is easy to say. So what needs saying here? That Vietnam U23 has a good chance to advance, but that chance is not yet secured by a complete tactical structure. That the team has an excellent spiritual leader but depends too much on him. That the team has an interim coach who understands his players but lacks a clear long-term positioning. These three weaknesses do not need to become tragedy. But they need to be faced directly. A saying I often use with young reporters: "Numbers do not lie — be patient and hear them tell of the girl running 90 minutes for desire." Here, the numbers are telling us a two-sided story. One side is the story of admirable persistence. The other is the story of 74 minutes of deadlock that needs explaining, not concealing behind a lucky detail. DATA DOES NOT LIE I want to dedicate a section to what I consider most important in any analysis: the limits of the data we have. In the Philippines match, we know the team scored twice on minutes 74 and 86. We know the team controlled the game. We know the opponent defended deep with numbers. We know Xuan Bac had a role in the second goal. But we do not know Vietnam U23's quality chance count, shot count, pressing metrics, or chance conversion efficiency by half. Without those numbers, any conclusion about whether the team played well or poorly is merely speculation dressed in emotion. And I want to say plainly: those who confidently assert the team played well based only on a 2-0 scoreline are doing something dangerous. They are turning a result into a conclusion. In science, that is a basic reasoning error. In football, it is how a team lulls itself to sleep before a bigger challenge. I know some will say: "But the team won, just be happy." And I agree we have the right to be happy. A win at the Asiad is something to celebrate, especially in youth football. But being happy and analyzing are two different things. We can be happy with a victory and simultaneously sober about what is missing. That is not contradiction. That is maturity. There is one more thing I want to mention. I have followed Vietnamese youth football for over two decades, and I have recognized a worrying pattern. We often play well in the group stage, produce beautiful wins, then fail in knockout matches against physically and organizationally stronger opponents. This pattern repeats often enough to be a systemic issue, not an incidental mishap. And if we do not talk about it, it will keep repeating. A VIEW FROM THE BENCH: THE XUAN BAC PROBLEM I want to return to the Xuan Bac story, but this time from the coaching perspective. Any coach with a player like Xuan Bac is in a position both delightful and anxious. Delightful because he has someone to carry both defensive and attacking duties, someone who reads the game well and has leadership ability. Anxious because when you build a playing style around one person, you are betting on that person's continuous presence. And in a short tournament with a dense schedule, continuous presence is something no one can guarantee. If Xuan Bac is injured, suspended, or simply marked out with tight coverage, who will Vietnam U23 use as the initiation point? This is a question the coaching staff must answer before the Uzbekistan match. And if the answer is "no plan B," that is a serious tactical hole. A mature team is not a team with one star. A mature team is a team where the star can be absent and the system still operates. This is the standard I want Vietnam U23 to conquer in the coming time, and it cannot be conquered in one match. It needs a long-term plan. I say this with understanding for Vinh. He is in a difficult position. He is an interim coach, handed a team in a short tournament, and he must achieve something immediately to advance. In that context, building a structure independent of one individual is a luxury he may not have time for. I do not blame him. I only raise what long-term football people need to see: a system cannot be built on the foundation of one person. LESSONS FROM WOMEN'S FOOTBALL You may wonder why someone who writes specializing in women's sports devotes this article to men's U23 football. The answer is simple: I do not write about gender. I write about football. And the low-block problem, the overreliance on one creative point, the fitness problem against Central Asian opponents — all are universal problems, not distinguished by gender. But there is one thing I learned from women's football that I want to bring here. It is the lesson of building from the foundation. Vietnamese women's football has made incredible strides over the past two decades, and those strides did not come from one star. They came from building a development system, from teaching girls the basics before teaching the complex, and from persevering for many years despite scarcity. I write football to prove human value — not in the stands, but on the pitch. And human value on the pitch is proven by structure, by discipline, by coordination, not by lucky stories. The black shirt can be a beautiful memory of the Philippines match. But what will decide the Uzbekistan match is structure, not the color of the shirt. The question I want the coaching staff to answer before the match is not "what color shirt today," but "if we are marked out, do we have plan B." That is the difference between a team building and a team waiting for luck. THINGS TO WATCH FOR When the Uzbekistan match takes place, I will track five specific things. First, the timing of the first goal. If Vietnam U23 can break the deadlock before minute 45, that is a sign of maturity. If it has to wait until minute 70 and beyond, that is a sign of anxiety. Second, quality chances in the first half. This is a far more important metric than possession percentage. Third, Xuan Bac's role without the ball. Where is he on the pitch when the opponent controls the ball? If he has to drop too deep, that is a sign the shape is being stretched. Fourth, set-piece defending. Uzbekistan with its physical advantage can exploit set pieces to score, and this is where Southeast Asian teams are often most vulnerable. Fifth, how the team reacts when conceding. A mature team does not panic. An immature team loses structure and harms itself. These are not things I track to judge. These are things I track to understand. The pitch has no room for bias — only the ball, the tactics, and who dares to stand up. And in difficult matches like this, the one who dares to stand up is often not the most mentioned before the match. It is the one doing his job right in the hardest moment. ABOUT THOSE NOT MENTIONED In any match, there are always those who appear on the scoreboard and those who do not. The scorer is named. The assister is praised. The water carrier for the team is silent. But a team lives by those silent ones. In Vietnam U23, there is one thing I appreciate: the squad is a blend of players based abroad and players based domestically. Nhat Minh is one such case — a player from the V.League environment. The existence of players like Nhat Minh shows that Vietnamese football's development path still runs mainly through the V.League and VFF youth tournaments, not yet through a professional export pipeline. This is both a strength and a weakness. The strength is that the V.League remains a place nurturing talent. The weakness is that when young players are not exposed to higher-level football abroad, they will lack precious experience only an international environment provides. I think of the young players training on hot afternoons in development centers, those without spectators, without cameras, without sponsorship deals. They train believing in a dream. And when a player like Nhat Minh steps onto the Asiad pitch and plays, he is not playing only for himself. He is playing for all those training at home, those not yet seen. The lights go out, but life goes on — I write about players who do not leave the pitch even without spectators. And when I write about Vietnam U23, I also write about those people. Not to create an easy-to-share emotional story, but to remind that behind every name on the team sheet is a life, a family, a dream, a fear. THE VALUE OF A HARD-FOUGHT WIN There is an aspect I want to spend some time on: the value of a hard-fought win compared to an easy one. Many think a big win is a sign of strength. I do not think so. In youth football, a big win often only proves the opponent was too weak, not that our team was too strong. Conversely, a hard-fought win against an opponent who knows how to defend teaches the team more than any training session. It teaches patience. It teaches not giving up. It teaches finding a gap when there is none. But there is one thing a hard-fought win cannot teach. It cannot teach how to create quality chances if that same match shows the team did not create enough quality chances. It cannot teach how to overcome a physically stronger opponent if that same match shows the team struggled even against a weaker one. This is why I cannot view the Philippines win as a passed test. It is a submitted test, but the grade is not yet published. And the real grade will be published in the Uzbekistan match. BROADER CONTEXT: WHERE WE STAND ON THE ASIAN YOUTH FOOTBALL MAP To understand Vietnam U23, we need to place them on the Asian youth football map. At the top tier are Japan, Korea, Saudi Arabia, Iran — teams with top continental youth systems, producing players who play in major leagues. In the middle tier are teams like Uzbekistan, methodical and physical but not yet reaching the top tier. And at the lower end of the competitive group are Southeast Asian teams, among which Vietnam U23 is one of the leaders. Vietnam U23's position on this map is the top of Southeast Asia but still with a gap to Central Asian teams. This is a truth not easy to hear, but it must be said so we have the right target. This gap is not a sentence. It is a challenge that can be narrowed by working correctly over many years. Uzbekistan, as a middle-tier Asian team, is an ideal test for Vietnam U23. If we can face them fairly, it is a sign we are moving closer to the middle tier. If we lose heavily, it is a sign the gap remains large. And if we lose narrowly after a balanced match, it is a sign we are on the right trajectory but need more time. In this respect, I do not weigh the Uzbekistan result heavily as much as the way the team plays. A loss but playing with structure is a better result than a lucky win. This is a principle I believe deeply after many years observing youth football: process decides the future, results only decide memory. THE PSYCHOLOGY OF A YOUNG TEAM BEFORE A BIG MATCH There is one thing I care about greatly when speaking of young teams: psychology. In their twenties, a player can play like a hero one match and like a child the next. Emotional stability is not an innate skill. It is trained over time, and it is especially hard to train in a short tournament where every match is decisive. In that context, the role of a spiritual leader like Xuan Bac becomes more important than the role of a scorer. A leader is not only someone who plays well. He is the one who keeps teammates believing they can. He is the one saying the right thing at the right time. He is the one staying calm when the whole team is panicking. And in a match where the opponent is stronger in every metric, the calmness of one person can be the only asset we have more of than the opponent. This is why I say depending on Xuan Bac is not only a tactical problem. It is a psychological one. If the team believes it can only win when he is present, then his absence, even for a few minutes, will collapse collective belief. And collective belief, in youth football, is often more important than individual technique. This is what the coaching staff needs to handle not with tactics, but with conversation. A well-timed conversation can do more than a three-hour tactical session. And if I could say one thing to Vinh, I would say: take the time to tell the players they are stronger than they think, even without Xuan Bac. THE SET-PIECE DEFENDING PROBLEM Here I want to go into a tactical detail I consider a potential weakness of Vietnam U23 in the Uzbekistan match: set-piece defending. Central Asian teams, with physical advantages, often exploit corners and free kicks very well. They have tall, strong players with good aerial ability. And Southeast Asian teams, with smaller physical foundations, are often victims of exactly these situations. Vietnam U23, from what I observe, has a defense that is not weak but not especially strong in aerial situations. If Uzbekistan can create four or five corners in a match, that is already a significant danger. And in knockout matches, where one goal can decide the whole game, good set-piece defending is a survival condition. There are two ways to deal with this danger. The first is proactive defending: tight marking, denying the opponent space to move, and clearing the ball before it reaches the danger zone. The second is passive defending: crowding the box, accepting the opponent has the ball but not the space. Each has pros and cons. Proactive defending risks conceding fouls in the box. Passive defending risks conceding from long shots or from chaotic situations. I will watch which one Vinh chooses. And I will watch whether the Vietnam U23 defense is calm enough to execute it with discipline. THE FITNESS PROBLEM Here I want to say what is perhaps most important of all: fitness. In a short tournament with a dense schedule, fitness becomes the deciding factor. Not technique. Not tactics. Fitness. A tired team runs slower, reacts slower, decides slower. And in a match where the opponent is physically stronger, fatigue creates an ever-widening gap. Coach Dinh Hong Vinh giving high priority to rest and recovery before the Uzbekistan match is a sign he understands this. In modern football, recovery is not a side activity. It is part of tactics. The most successful teams in short tournaments are those who manage their energy like a precious resource. But there is a question I cannot answer: can the coaching staff recover the team in such a short time? The answer lies behind the dressing room door, in light sessions, in nutrition, in the sleep quality of each player. These are things we do not see on screen, but they determine what we see on screen. This is why I always remind young reporters: do not only look at the match. Look at what happens before and after. That is where the next match is decided. THE BLACK SHIRT AND THE TRUTH ABOUT BELIEF IN SPORT I want to return once more to the black shirt, but this time from a broader angle. Belief in sport is a very human thing. Players have small pre-match rituals. They have lucky shirts, lucky boots, lucky actions. These are not silly superstitions. They are a way for humans to process the uncertainty of sport. When you stand before a match whose outcome is not entirely within your control, believing in something small and controllable helps you calm down. So when Vietnam U23 players asked their coach to wear black, they were not saying they believe in luck over technique. They were seeking a collective ritual, a way to feel connected, a way to reduce pre-match tension. And the coach accepting it shows something important: he places his relationship with his players above the prejudice about a coach's "seriousness." This is something I greatly appreciate. In football, some coaches believe they must appear cold and distant to maintain authority. They believe a coach who is friendly with players is a weak coach. This is not true. Authority in modern football does not come from distance. It comes from trust. And trust can only be built when both sides feel they can talk to each other as human beings. But I must also mention the other side. A lucky ritual is a way to calm down, not a way to win. If the team believes it won because of the black shirt, it will not seek to improve its weaknesses. And a team that does not improve its weaknesses is a team standing still. This is the fragile boundary every team must respect: allowed to believe in luck, but not allowed to rely on it. ABOUT VIETNAMESE SPORTS MEDIA Finally, I want to write a few words about my own profession. Vietnamese sports media has a characteristic both lovely and worrying at once: we love the national team with burning passion. When the team wins, we create stories, articles, videos. When the team loses, we find faults, responsible parties. Both reactions come from love. But love without sobriety can do harm. The black shirt story is an example. It spread widely because it is cute, easy to share, and creates a positive feeling. But while thousands shared the black shirt story, how many asked about the 74 minutes of deadlock before it? How many wondered why the team could not score earlier? This is the hole in our media: we are good at telling easy-to-hear stories, and weak at asking hard questions. I am not saying we should stop telling positive stories. I am saying we should tell both sides. An article about the Philippines win can both praise the team's persistence and analyze what the team needs to improve. The two do not contradict. They complement each other. And I believe Vietnamese readers are intelligent enough to read both. I have received emails from readers asking why I do not write more pieces like this. Those readers understand that a sports writer is not just a fan. He is an observer, an analyst, a storyteller, and sometimes an asker of uncomfortable questions. All those roles are necessary for the growth of a football nation. ABOUT BUILDING A COMMUNITY THAT UNDERSTANDS FOOTBALL BETTER I believe in building community. I believe a football nation is only strong when it has a community that understands football, not just one that loves football. Understanding football means knowing that a win is not always a sign of progress. That a player is not judged only by goals. That a coach is not judged only by results. That data is not a tool for judging, but a tool for understanding. This is why I spend my time not only writing articles, but also talking. I have talked with fan groups, with student classes, with young girls dreaming of becoming sports journalists. I always tell them one thing: when you write about sport, you write about people. And when you write about people, you have a responsibility to write the truth. The truth about Vietnam U23 after the Philippines match is a two-sided truth. One side is the truth of a persistent team that won, took four points, and gained good momentum. The other is the truth of a team still deadlocked, still dependent, still needing to prove itself. Both are true. And the writer has a responsibility to tell both. I HAVE SAT IN DIFFERENT SEATS I began my reporting career in 2026, when I was young and full of passion. Over more than two decades, I have passed through many stadiums, many press rooms, many lands. I have covered Olympic Games, World Cups, and famous cycling races. Each place taught me something about sport, and more than that, about people. I remember once, in a press room, a colleague told me women should only write about players' beauty, not comment on tactics. I answered with data. I gave numbers on successful dribbles, chances created, goals, and movement positions. That colleague went silent. Later, he apologized. The incident spread on social media and became a story about expertise beating prejudice. But what I learned from that incident was not "I won." What I learned was something bigger: in any field, the strongest way to overcome prejudice is not argument, but proof. No one can argue with a carefully collected and clearly presented number. And that is how I write about Vietnam U23 today. Not to prove the team is bad. Not to prove the team is good. But to present what I see, what I know, and what I am not sure of, as honestly as possible. Readers may agree or not. That does not matter. What matters is they have enough information to decide for themselves. LOOKING FORWARD The Uzbekistan match will take place. The lineup will be finalized. The tactics will be chosen. The players will step onto the pitch, and they will play. No one knows how it will end. That is the wonder of sport — uncertainty. But there is one thing I know for sure. Whatever the result, I will write about it. If Vietnam U23 wins, I will write about what helped them win, and what they still need to improve. If they lose, I will write about what they did right, and what they can learn. Because my job is not to celebrate or criticize. My job is to understand, and to help others understand. And because throughout my career, I have learned that great teams are not teams that never lose. They are teams that learn from every match, win or lose. Vietnam U23 is on that road. They have potential. They have people. They have a community behind them. What they need now is not praise or criticism. What they need is the truth. Every play is a piece of a puzzle — every piece is a destiny waiting to be recognized. And when I write about them, I try to recognize them not just as players, but as people striving, dreaming, stumbling, and growing. My final thought for the Uzbekistan match is not a prediction. It is a question: can Vietnam U23 play a match that we, the observers, can look at and say "they understood how to overcome difficulty"? If the answer is yes, the black shirt will become a small memory in a bigger story. If the answer is no, the black shirt will be a lesson about how we cannot hide structural problems behind cute stories. Either way, I will be here, watching every minute, recording every number, and writing. Because that is my job, and that is what I believe in: writing football to prove human value — not in the stands, but on the pitch.