Vietnam U23 fly to Japan after a single training session: the Asian Games begins at the airport, not on the pitch

On the afternoon of 12 September 2026, Vietnam's U23 national team held exactly one training session. It did not open a three-week camp, and it did not follow any earlier session. It stood alone. A few hours later, the squad boarded a bus to the airport and took an overnight flight to Japan.

In the early hours of 13 September, the plane landed. By around 6 a.m., head coach Dinh Hong Vinh and his players were on Japanese soil. On 15 September, Vietnam play Kuwait in their opening match. Between those two moments lie forty-eight hours filled with a recovery nap, one pitch familiarisation session, some paperwork, and almost no room for football.

A national team heading to a continental tournament after a single session. That is a fact, and it needs no lament to carry weight. It will say more than any tactical analysis we are about to read over the next three weeks.

Football began at the check-in desk

The squad assembled in three waves. Fifteen players reported from midday on 12 September. Six others came straight from the V.League match between Hanoi and SLNA, five of them SLNA players. The remaining two flew to Japan on 14 September, one day before the Kuwait fixture.

The first wave numbered 21 travelling players; two followed. The largest group only became complete on the night of 14 September. Put plainly: Vietnam enter the Asian Games opener with roughly one full day of collective training, after a flight of more than four thousand kilometres and a two-hour time shift.

Group C consists of Kuwait, the Philippines and Uzbekistan. The group matches fall on 15, 18 and 22 September, three games in eight days. The team is based in Nagoya but plays at venues in Nagoya, Toyota, Kariya and Osaka. There is inter-city travel, changing pitches, and afternoons eaten by buses and hotels.

The target announced by the Vietnam Football Federation before departure is a quarterfinal place. The VFF General Secretary was present to encourage the squad before the flight. It is a familiar way of setting a goal, and it produces a very concrete consequence: any result below that line will be read as failure, regardless of the preparation context.

The most-cited benchmark is the 2026 Asian Games, where Vietnam reached the semifinals under Park Hang Seo and finished fourth. But that squad was a generation built continuously through the AFC U23 Championship, qualifiers and several long training camps. Using it as a yardstick for a group stitched together in one session is a comparison that fails at the level of basic logic.

What can actually be installed in one session

Setting emotion aside, this is a very concrete professional problem.

In a single session, a coach can finalise a squad list, split teams, state a few principles and rehearse a handful of set-piece routines. He cannot install a high pressing system. He cannot build a structured build-up from the back. He cannot drill the collective reaction to losing the ball in three different zones. Those things take dozens of sessions, a few friendlies, and time to fail and correct.

The consequence is that Vietnam's tactical ceiling at this tournament sits well below the quality of the players. The team will have to defend in a low or mid block, prioritise distances between lines, limit risk, and seek goals from set pieces, transitions and opponent errors. That is the pragmatic choice every late-assembled team is forced into.

Teams that assemble late or rotate heavily do not win through systems; they win through defensive structure, set pieces and second balls. I have watched enough K League and J.League football to see that pattern repeat, in a world where clubs play every three days and nobody gets proper training time. Vietnam are in exactly that situation, only under greater compression.

The physical issue is not small either. Six players played a V.League match, then got on a bus, then a plane, then flew overnight. They enter a run of three games in eight days without a proper recovery cycle. In youth football, soft-tissue risk during the club-to-country handover is always above average. The two latest arrivals are therefore almost certain to be treated as substitutes against Kuwait rather than starters.

One further detail deserves attention: the competition format as reported. Initial information described 15 teams in three groups, with the top two from each group advancing to the quarterfinals. Three groups times two places is six teams, while a quarterfinal bracket requires eight. The numbers do not reconcile. Most likely, best-placed third teams also advance, or the group structure differs from what was published. For a team whose stated target is the quarterfinals, misreading the qualification rules is not a trivial matter, because it determines whether the Uzbekistan match is a decider or a chance to rest legs.

Where I break from the crowd

Consensus is where stories go quiet; I choose to stand where the wind blows the other way.

The consensus is forming fast: Vietnam prepared on the cheap, a quarterfinal target is fanciful, and an early exit would be an organisational failure. It sounds reasonable. But the "one training session" story is doing something else, it works as a shield for everyone involved.

If the team loses, people will talk about one training session. If the team wins, people will talk about character. Nobody has to answer the hardest question: why a continental tournament was scheduled in a window where the V.League calendar kept running, and why clubs only released players after their own fixtures had finished.

The Asian Games do not sit inside FIFA's official international calendar, so clubs are under no obligation to release players. That is the root of it. In South Korea, where I follow football week to week, the Asian Games double as a military service exemption pathway, so the whole system has to make room. In Vietnam, where the tournament generates no equivalent pressure, the national team becomes the weaker party in the negotiation, and the result is one training session.

In other words, the problem does not sit with the coach. Dinh Hong Vinh inherited a squad handed over late, short of bodies, and burdened with a high target. One training session will not kill this team; it will only sharpen the judgements that follow.

It is also worth saying the opposite of what most people want to hear: this group is not as brutal as it feels. Kuwait are awkward West Asian opposition but not unbeatable at this age level. The Philippines are opponents Vietnamese youth teams usually handle. Uzbekistan are the genuinely worrying name, and Vietnam are fortunate to meet the Central Asians last, with two matches already behind them to find rhythm.

People look at the table to see who leads; I look at the fixture list to see who is about to break. This schedule gives Vietnam a narrow but real opening. It closes only if the team slip in the first match, while their legs are still heavy from the overnight flight.

Three signals across ninety minutes in Nagoya

The Asian Games are the sleeping giant of continental football: the largest event by scale, yet for men's football a youth-age platform ranked behind World Cup qualifiers, the AFC Asian Cup and even the SEA Games in many federations' priorities. That is precisely why a national team aiming to go deep here usually has to manufacture its own preparation rather than wait for the system to provide it.

The starting line-up against Kuwait will reveal whether the staff trust legs or familiarity. If four or more players who featured in the V.League on 12 September start, that is a signal they are betting on fitness rather than sharpness.

How the team defends the opening twenty minutes matters too. A newly assembled side tends to leave gaps between the lines before distances become instinctive. If Vietnam hold a compact block across that spell, the minimum tactical foundation is working.

And set pieces. With one session behind them, dead-ball routines are the only thing that can be installed to a passable standard, and the most realistic route to a goal for a low-block team.

My betting conclusion: Vietnam will not win through dominance, but they can navigate the group through structure, managed fitness and at least one goal from a set piece. If they concede inside the first twenty minutes in Nagoya, that script changes entirely, and the argument about one training session will become an argument about a football nation that still refuses to redraw its calendar.