Dinh Bac scores in the 25th minute as Vietnam win their opener: three debutants and Kim Sang Sik's game-control problem

In the 25th minute, a low cross came in from the right, struck a Philippine defender's back and changed direction. Dinh Bac was in the right place at the right time, finishing cleanly past Falkesgaard. Vietnam's only goal of their opening match came from a move that, without that touch off a defender's back, would probably have ended in a completely different part of the pitch.

I watched that sequence back four times. Not to look for faults, but to see who started it. Thanh Long collected the ball near the centre circle, lifted his head before it arrived, and released a through ball into the space behind the Philippine left-back. A 19-year-old sprinted onto it. That is the detail I want to hold onto before saying anything else about this match.

Three points secured, Vietnam's unbeaten run extended to 27 matches. But if we stop at that number, we skip over the entire body of unfinished work this game left on Kim Sang Sik's desk.

The real talking point is not that Vietnam won, but how Vietnam lost control of the game within minutes of scoring.

The context before kick-off

This was the opening match of a campaign played against the backdrop of a dense competitive cycle stretching over several months. Kim Sang Sik did not have his strongest possible squad. A string of familiar first-team players were unavailable through injury and overload, while domestic and international calendars offered nobody a proper rest.

That situation forced the Korean coach to do something he had postponed for a long time: genuinely widen the squad, not just widen the list of call-ups. For a long stretch, Vietnam revolved around a relatively fixed group. Every camp was another reshuffle of the same people, players swapped between positions to plug one hole with the man from another.

The Philippines were not a weak opponent in any formal sense. They came in with a clear plan: concede possession, drop the block, wait for mistakes and exploit transitions. That approach made complete sense against a higher-rated opponent.

I have followed Vietnam's matches throughout this 27-game unbeaten run, and one pattern has repeated often enough to become a standing concern: Kim Sang Sik's team plays very well when it is under pressure, but looks deeply uncertain when it is ahead.

That sounds absurd. Leading is a state every team wants. But there is a difference between taking the lead and knowing how to manage it. The Philippines match was a vivid demonstration of that gap.

When Vietnam dropped too deep

After the opening goal, Vietnam's block visibly sank. This was not a proactive adjustment from the touchline; it was a collective reflex, the whole team retreating to protect what it had just won.

The first problem was that the distances between the lines stretched horizontally rather than vertically. The defence dropped, the midfield followed to avoid leaving space in front of the back four, and the result was a completely isolated front line.

With the defence deep and the midfield tracking back, the gap between midfield and attack widened. Dinh Bac, alone up front, was marked tightly by two Philippine centre-backs with no escape route behind.

The consequence for transitions was inevitable. Vietnam won the ball back in midfield several times, but the moment it was released, there were not enough players ahead to form a structured counterattack. Moves died after two touches or were pushed wide and killed there.

A deep block only works when it comes with organised counterattacking. When the counterattack loses its structure, the deep block becomes a team locking itself inside its own box and waiting for something bad to happen.

Between the 25th and 60th minutes, the Philippines held far more of the ball. They did not create chances through elaborate build-up, but through second balls, third balls and set pieces. That is a sign their pressure came from Vietnam's inability to keep the ball, not from any superior attacking plan.

Sustained pressure produced defensive errors. There were careless back-passes, balls played through the first line far too easily, and duels lost by arriving half a beat late. None of those errors produced a goal, but all of them happened in dangerous areas.

Two escapes and one outstanding performance

The Philippines lacked a clinical finish. That is a chronic weakness of teams that play this way: they generate situations but have no player with the composure to finish them. Many of their chances died in the final beat, when the ball reached someone who was not the designated finisher.

The crossbar saved Vietnam once. It was the kind of moment that, had it gone in, would have had us discussing a frustrating draw and a second half strangled at birth. The ball travelled into exactly the wrong spot for a goalkeeper, and only the woodwork stood in the right place.

But the player who deserves the most attention from the second half is Patrik Le Giang.

The dual-heritage goalkeeper had the game I consider the single brightest individual performance on the Vietnamese side. He handled aerial balls well, timed his runs off his line sensibly, and, most importantly, stayed focused during periods when the team in front of him was being cut open repeatedly.

There was a moment around the 70th minute when Vietnam's back line left a gap between centre-back and full-back. The ball was played into exactly that channel and Le Giang read the situation before the shot was taken. It was not a spectacular diving save; it was a save made with positional intelligence. The kind of save spectators forget and goalkeeping coaches remember for a long time.

When your team cannot control a game after taking the lead, the goalkeeper becomes the one carrying the most weight. Le Giang did that job without any significant error.

Three debutants and what they brought

Amid all the structural problems, this match still left Kim Sang Sik with three new options. And with the squad thin through injury, those three options are worth far more than a routine narrow win.

Adou Minh started from the beginning, alongside Viet Anh and Xuan Manh in defence. The CAHN centre-back impressed with his awareness in reading situations, his composure on the ball and his strength in one-on-one duels.

What struck me most about Adou Minh was not his tackling but his positioning. In several moments when the Philippines built from wide areas, this centre-back did not rush out at the ball but held his position to protect the zone in front of the goalkeeper. That is the defensive thinking of someone properly coached, not the reflex of a player who only knows how to dive in.

Yes, one duel lost in a foot race in the 38th minute showed he still needs time to adapt to international pace. But he compensated with reading the game ahead of the play, and that is a harder quality to teach than speed.

Khoa Ngo came on in the 70th minute and almost immediately gave Vietnam another attacking outlet. He moved into the spaces the Philippines left behind when they pushed up chasing an equaliser, creating two dangerous situations inside the box within his first ten minutes on the pitch.

Khoa Ngo's introduction gave Kim a further option in attack, at a time when he is trying to broaden a squad that had long depended on a familiar group. A player willing to stand in the gap between the lines and play forward is exactly what Vietnam's attack has been missing in games that get split apart.

But the most decisive contribution came from Williams Minh Hoang, the player who directly helped create the only goal.

The move of a 19-year-old

Hoang collected Thanh Long's through ball, accelerated down the right flank and delivered a low cross. The ball struck a Philippine defender's back and changed direction. Dinh Bac reacted fastest, finishing past Falkesgaard.

The deflection brought an element of fortune. Without it, the move might have ended differently. Even so, the pressure Vietnam applied and Hoang's contribution deserved a reward.

Few had expected Kim to hand the teenager a starting place in the opening match. Hoang immediately justified that confidence, showing intelligent movement, sound technique and an ability to create chances. He also settled quickly into the team's style, combining smoothly with his new teammates.

Notably, despite standing 1.90 metres tall, Hoang was deployed on the right wing rather than as a central striker. That was a calculated choice, with Xuan Son already occupying the central role. Using a tall player wide is not unusual in modern football, but it demands acceleration and the ability to handle the ball in tight spaces, qualities not every tall forward possesses.

Hoang has both. He moves nimbly, touches the ball deftly and never looked flustered when Philippine defenders closed him down.

When Xuan Son left the tournament

One detail changed the whole picture: Xuan Son left the tournament early through injury.

That is a heavy loss. Xuan Son is not only a goalscorer; he is the link that holds Vietnam's attacking structure together. With him central, the wide players have an anchor to combine with and the midfield has a reliable long option under pressure.

Without Xuan Son, Kim must find a way to fill that gap. And Williams Minh Hoang suddenly becomes the most serious candidate.

The CA TP.HCM forward may now be asked to take on more responsibility for scoring alongside Dinh Bac. That is a significant shift in role for a player with only a few training sessions with the national team.

Born in 2026, Hoang has progressed at astonishing speed. He needed only half a season to establish himself at CA TP.HCM, and just a few training sessions with the national team to impress Kim and earn a starting place.

The decision to trust him appears grounded in his qualities rather than an attempt to rush his development. The forward of Vietnamese and English heritage has the attributes of a potential first-choice striker: pace, technique, strength, hold-up play and finishing ability.

His game is straightforward and effective, reflecting a European style, while his size is complemented by nimble movement and deft touches.

A 1.90-metre forward playing wide, able to accelerate and to cross on the right beat, is a profile Southeast Asian football rarely produces, and Vietnam should not waste time deciding his long-term role.

What is actually worrying

I want to say something plainly that I know will irritate many people.

Vietnam's problem in this match was not that the team dropped too deep after taking the lead. Dropping deep is a perfectly legitimate tactical decision, and hundreds of major teams do it every week. Jupp Heynckes' Bayern Munich dropped deep. Diego Simeone's Atletico Madrid drop deep. Dropping deep is not the error.

The problem is that Vietnam was not prepared for that situation.

When a team decides to sit deep to protect a lead, it must keep at least two players high with clear jobs: one to hold the ball, one to run in behind. That is the minimum structure for a counterattacking block.

Vietnam had no such structure. Dinh Bac was alone up front, and he is not a hold-up striker. When the midfielders dropped, they dropped all the way, leaving nobody in midfield as a connecting point. The result was that every time Vietnam won the ball back, it had to either play long or play backwards, and both options ended in losing possession.

This is a structural problem, not an attitude problem. Vietnamese players did not lack effort. They ran, they contested, they covered for each other. But effort without structure only prolongs the suffering.

And here is the point I want to stress: this phenomenon is not new. It has appeared repeatedly across the 27-game unbeaten run. That run is genuinely admirable, but it can also mask unresolved problems, because in football good results tend to blur the need for repairs.

The offside trap in how we read the game

There is a way of reading this match that I see everywhere, and I believe it is wrong.

That reading says: Vietnam won through luck. The ball hit a defender's back. The crossbar saved them once. The goalkeeper was outstanding. The Philippines finished poorly. So these three points were lucky points that do not reflect real ability.

I disagree, and my reason is not that I want to defend the national team.

My reason is that this reading ignores the entire body of work that produced those lucky moments. Hoang's cross did not appear out of nowhere. It came from a through ball played at the right moment, from a run made at the right tempo, and from a 19-year-old willing to sprint in on his debut. The crossbar only saves teams whose goalkeeper stands in the right place to narrow the angle. And the Philippines finished poorly partly because Patrik Le Giang had closed the angles they might have scored from.

Luck in football is not an independent random variable. It is the reward for teams that put themselves in a position to receive it.

But having said that, I must say the rest: Vietnam put itself in a position to receive luck in the first half, and in a position to need luck in the second. Those two halves were not the same, and the distance between them is exactly what Kim Sang Sik must address.

The story of widening a squad

There is a paradox in how Vietnam operates under Kim Sang Sik.

He is known as a coach who values stability. He builds a framework, sticks with it, and changes only when forced. That stability has delivered results: 27 matches unbeaten is a record not every team in the region can claim.

But that stability also created a side effect: when injuries and fatigue hit at the same time, the national team had no battle-tested backup plan.

The Philippines match was the first time in a while that we saw Kim forced to field three debutants at once. And the interesting part is that all three met the requirement.

That is good news. But it also raises a difficult question: if Adou Minh, Khoa Ngo and Williams Minh Hoang were ready all along, why were they only given a chance when the squad ran out of options?

I do not have a definitive answer. It could be a matter of timing. It could be that young players need time to absorb the tactical system. It could simply be the reluctance to change that afflicts any coach on a good run.

But I know one thing: in modern football, scouting networks in developing football nations both find genuine talent and produce lottery tickets and broken families. Giving young players opportunities must be done systematically, not as an emergency response. When chances only arrive in a crisis, we are gambling that a young player will shine immediately, a bet with poor odds.

Three debutants performing well on their first appearances is a positive signal. But the fact that they were only tested when the squad ran dry is the more thought-provoking signal.

The Thailand problem

Next up is Thailand, and that will be a decisive test of several things.

Thailand do not play the way the Philippines do. They will not hand over the game entirely. They can move the ball quickly through midfield and have players with enough technique to break down a deep block. If Vietnam repeats the deep-drop script after taking the lead against Thailand, the consequences could be far more serious.

Another start for Williams Minh Hoang would therefore be little surprise. Whether he can fill Xuan Son's role remains an open question, but he has already shown the potential to become a long-term option for Kim.

What I want to see against Thailand is not a win. I want to see Vietnam keep the ball for ten minutes after scoring. I want to see at least two players stay in midfield when the team drops. I want to see a counterattacking block with structure, not a purely defensive block waiting for something good.

Those are metrics that do not appear on the scoreboard. But they determine whether a team can go far.

What remains open

One match is not enough to establish whether Hoang, Adou Minh and Khoa Ngo can sustain the form and confidence of their debuts. Their performances nevertheless provide welcome possibilities at a difficult moment for the coach.

Vietnam's opening victory was far from complete. Beyond the three points, though, it revealed fresh alternatives for a side whose coach has spent considerable time reshuffling largely the same personnel.

There is something I have learned from years of watching regional football: wins like this are the most dangerous kind. They satisfy just enough without showing precisely what needs fixing.

So here is my prediction, for you to hold me to: if Vietnam does not change its counterattacking structure before facing Thailand, we will witness a second half in which the team endures far more than it did against the Philippines.

To put it bluntly: a single victory does not define a team. How that team handles its advantage defines it.