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It’s been a while since I didn’t watch Vietnam national football match. Many different reasons impacted my feelings and passion for watching them, and I decided only to watch matches from my favorite football club, Manchester United. But yesterday, I changed my mind and watched the final match between Vietnam and Thailand at the ASEAN Cup Final. And it gave me a lot of things to reflect on, not just only because of the result but also the activities and lessons I can see from that match.
Bad things will happen; have your backup plan.
The VN team started the match with a small advantage of the home win, 2 - 1, at Viet Tri Stadium, so we only needed a draw to become a champion. We had a super striker named Xuan Son, who is a naturalization and scored lots of goals during the tournament to lead the national VN team to the final. Having the silver bullet is great, but I had the question in my mind: what if we lose it?
And like the Murphy Law, our striker got a serious injury right from the first half and was substituted by another player. From that moment, the game is dominated by the opponent as the rest of the team seems not ready for that situation. It reminds me of the popular quote, “Plan for the best but prepare for the worst.”
To reflect on what I'm doing with career coaching or in our career development, we normally start with the question of figuring out what are our strengths and weaknesses. But from this lesson, we probably better come up with another question is that “If that is the only strength that I have, what will happen if I lose it? What can be the backup plan, or we become completely useless?”
Being right or Being kind?
The game-changing point of the match, I think, was the moment the opponent scored the second goal against our team. It was a controversial goal when the opponent players scored after taking the ball from a throw-in that the referee asked before because there was an injured player on the field. Normally, the player will return the ball to the team who has the ball control before the referee’s decision. But in this case, the midfielder decided to shoot and score, to the surprise of the whole VN team. The goal brought the game back to balance, and surely, it was a very important goal for Thailand at that moment, even if it was not a fair play action.
The referee took about 15 minutes to talk to both team and coaches before accepting the goal. He tried to convince the Thailand team and their coaches to do something similar to what Leeds United and Marcelo Bielsa did in the past which helped them win the . But this time, the answer is no. The Thailand team and their players didn’t break the rule, there’s no such official restriction on that action except their inner war. They decided to choose the right side, not the kind side. I was upset at that time as my impression of Thailand is that they are from a country with Buddhist tradition, so they are always the standard for the other national teams in ASEAN to follow up not just only by their good abilities but also professional playing style. It will be something similar to the impression the Japanese national football team sends to the world to market their brand. But now I think the whole effort the Thailand team has made in recent years is wiped away by just one decision, at least for me.
I know there will be arguments around that situation as it depends on your points of view, but in my opinion, it's quite similar to the story of . The national flag of Thailand, their logo, now will take lots of time to gain back the brand they’ve built for class and fair play.
Tough situations build strong people in the end
After the conceded goal, it was a hard time for our national team. We played in their national stadium, under the pressure of nearly 50.000 fans from Thailand, lost our main striker, and were impacted by the unfair play situation. I thought that our players would lose their minds in anger and the game would be out of our control soon. But no, it’s when I see the courage of the players, and that's when the best part of the game begins. The Vietnamese players stay calm, control the ball, and wait for mistakes from the opponent.
If you believe in Karma, you would see it from this game where the Thai national team started losing their minds with a red card, a conceded goal followed by another one, and finally lost the game.
The progress is far more important than the result.
It's not the first time our national football team has won the trophy or the tournament, but it's the most emotional and fascinating game I’ve ever seen. And it's worth every minute to watch the game even though the tactic, individual skills of the players, and the speed of the game cannot compare to what is happening in many other matches in the Premier League or Champions League.
I know it's really hard to share this story with those who didn't watch the match so that they can understand how it feels. I had that same feeling in the past when I watched the final matches between Manchester United vs Bayern Muchen and Liverpool vs AC Milan. The cup and the trophy for the winning team, the story, and the feeling will be shared with those who are patient to go through all the progress even good or bad.
I think that would be something similar to when we listen to successful stories from people, even though they already summarized all the key points to us, but we cannot feel the same as those who are with us during the hard times until glory.
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