"The Vietnamese team has reached the semi-finals, so they will meet any team," said Mr. Park Hang-seo after the 4-0 victory over Cambodia. This statement does not fully reflect the calculations of the Korean strategist. He did not want to face Thailand early in the semi-finals.
In the 86th minute, when Indonesia had just raised the score to 4-1 against Malaysia, Mr. Park Hang-seo immediately sent striker Ha Duc Chinh onto the field to replace Quang Hai. In the final minutes of the match, the Vietnamese team actively applied pressure to find more goals, instead of playing somewhat " relaxed" as before. Unfortunately, Mr. Park Hang-seo's calculation was unsuccessful.
Perhaps in his heart, the Vietnam coach did not think about the prospect of Indonesia beating Malaysia 4-1. In theory, the Malaysian team is still rated higher than Indonesia. In the two meetings in the 2022 World Cup qualifiers, Malaysia also won both matches against Indonesia. But the result of the match was beyond Mr. Park's expectations.
If he did not care who the opponent in the semi-finals was and was confident in the strength of his home team, Mr. Park would not have fielded the strongest team. The use of all the key attacking players shows that the Vietnamese team really wants to win big to top Group B, instead of giving strength to some key players.
The strength and position of Singapore and Thailand are completely different. The Singapore team has just entered the AFF Cup semi-finals for the first time in... 9 years. Meanwhile, the Thai team has continuously reached the semi-finals of the AFF Cup since 2012, including 3 times in the final and 2 times winning the championship. Obviously, the "War Elephants" are a much more formidable opponent than Singapore.
The statistics also partly reflect the strength of the Thai team. They won all group stage matches, despite using almost all of their players. Thailand's second team was also capable of overwhelming and beat Singapore 2-0.
After 4 group stage matches, Alexandre Polking's team has had a total of 84 shots, an average of 21 per match. Of which, they have had 36 shots on target (an average of 9 times/match), scored 10 goals and conceded 1 goal. Thailand is also the team with the highest ball possession rate in the group stage of the 2020 AFF Cup with a rate of up to 67.1%/match.
