If the negotiation process is completed, Tran Thi Thanh Thuy will leave Vietnam for the 7th time to play football abroad, and will be Japan - a country with the world's leading volleyball level. For the captain of the Vietnam National Team alone, it is certainly a desire to improve his skills at the age of 27. But this trip has another meaning, for Vietnamese sports. That is the affirmation: Vietnamese sports need to change the mindset of developing athletes.
Unlike training trips abroad "a two-week check-in, return is still the same", an athlete being able to live, practice and integrate into a professional environment for a long time is a journey to change thinking. The formula for change is: 21 days to break old habits, 60 days to form new habits, 90 days to consider that new habit as a need.
Therefore, going abroad - where each meal, working hours, training course, way of building discipline, organizing a training system... are all professional, meticulous, needing enough time to feel the difference. We cannot have too much hope in "reaping the sweet fruits" after short training trips, when most of the time is to... get used to the climate, visit the beach, and then return home. There are still lessons, but when we continue the old cycle, everything will become a loop.
If you don't change your habits, environment, or thinking - then don't expect to improve your sports level. Lessons from Thanh Thuy, from Quang Hai, Cong Phuong... who have gone abroad, although they have not had great success, it is clear that they themselves have matured later.
It is difficult to imagine that Vietnamese sports will move towards mass naturalization. Therefore, there is only one way that is most correct, which is to bring young athletes to the world as soon as possible, to live, practice and if possible, compete there. The longer you live in a professional environment, the easier it is to form the right habits and modern thinking of high-performance sports.
Not "go to know", but "go to change yourself". And not only those who go, but also the thinking of domestic sports people must change - from the way they choose roads, the choice of environment, to the way they look at the maturity of athletes.
