Vietnam team and the times they met European teams
Vietnamese football has re-integrated into international arenas since the 90s of the last century. Since then, the national men's football team has met many opponents from different regions (Asia, Europe, South America, North America, Africa), on many fronts. However, excluding European clubs, up to now, the "Golden Star Warriors" have only met national teams from the old continent 4 times.
Notably, the Vietnamese team won two of those matches. The first match was in January 1995, at the Independence Cup. At that time, the Vietnamese team met the Estonian team and won 1-0 with a goal by Le Huynh Duc in front of 12,060 spectators at Thong Nhat Stadium.
Two years later, in February, at the Dunhill Cup friendly tournament held in Malaysia, Vietnam met Bosnia & Herzegovina and lost 0-4. The third and last time Vietnam met a team from Europe was in 2003, in a friendly match against Albania in Italy. The match ended with a score of 5-0 for Albania.
In fact, there was another match in 1999, also at the Dunhill Cup in January - this time held at Thong Nhat Stadium, the Vietnam team won 1-0 against the Russian Olympic team, with a goal by Nguyen Phi Hung. That year, the Vietnam team reached the semi-finals and lost 1-4 to the Chinese team.
Winning 1 and losing 2 against European national teams is certainly not a bad result for the Vietnam team, even though we know that Estonia is one of the weakest football teams in this region (the average position on the FIFA rankings is 95 and in 1995 they were ranked 129). That year, Vietnam was ranked 122.
Still should only determine to learn
After 25 years, the Vietnam team will meet the Russian team again in the LPBank Cup friendly tournament during the FIFA Days in September. Each era is different, but while the Vietnam team has gone through many ups and downs to currently rank 115th in the world, the "Russian Bears" although not competing in major tournaments recently, they are still ranked 33rd in the world.
Of course, the difference in skill level is not debatable when Russian football has many quality players. Since September 2022, they have only lost 1 out of 13 matches (a rather surprising defeat against U23 Egypt in a friendly in September 2023). In the last 6 matches, the team of coach Valery Karpin - one of the best former midfielders of Russian football that Vietnamese fans are familiar with, won 4, drew 2, including 3 consecutive recent wins in which they scored 16 goals.
The squad that Mr. Karpin brought to Vietnam has many new and young players - the most experienced player has only 50 appearances for the national team, but for those who understand Russian football, they are really strong in training basic skills for players. And so, their playing style and style are always of high quality and aesthetics.
Facing technical players is a very useful lesson for the Vietnam National Team as well as for Vietnamese football, because it can guide the training style of players suitable for the physical condition of Vietnamese players.
