The Two Days of Lim Tae-yang: When Pleiku Becomes a Classroom for an U23 Side

In the last three matches before this article was written, there was not a single PPDA figure for a Vietnam U23 side. No lineup, no xG, no player names. That is precisely the point: we are standing before a major fixture in Pleiku, yet have not one number to hold onto.

Strange, isn't it. Football has been measured to the stud. Then we arrive at the VTV Cup 2026, and we realize that an international U23 tournament still exists as a blank space. Pleiku, this highland city, will host Vietnam U23, Thailand U23, Qatar U23 and Singapore U23. Four teams, round-robin format.

I am writing this more than a month before kick-off. The only thing I know for sure comes from a very short press release: on 8 November, the Vietnam U23 squad reassembles. On 10 November, they play their first match against Thailand. On 12 November, Singapore. On 14 November, Qatar. All three at 19:00.

[Insight] The first match takes place two days after reassembly. Not a week, not three days of training. Two days. An U23 national team walking into an international fixture after two sessions.

For a European team, that is unthinkable. For a Southeast Asian team, it is near-default. But the recognition that it is 'default' does not mean it is not worth dissecting. Two days, in modern football, is an enormous tactical variable, not an administrative detail.

I have covered eight World Cups, eight Olympics, several dozen J-League seasons and countless youth tournaments. That experience taught me one simple thing: when training time is compressed, teams do not play sophisticated tactics, they play memory. What is memory? The things players have already trained together. The corners taken hundreds of times. The defensive block shape already in the muscle.

Reading the fixture list again, I am surprised by the arrangement. Three days, five days, three matches. Match one against Thailand. Match two against Singapore. Match three against Qatar. That order is not random. If whoever organized this was serious, they deliberately built a rotation-friendly schedule.

Look at it another way: the Thailand fixture is the emotional and physical peak. This is a regional rival, a shared football culture, and the opening match on home soil. The Qatar fixture is the tactically 'strangest'. A West Asian representative, physically robust, comfortable in possession, trained in the Aspire academy model. The Singapore fixture sits between those two poles. A lower-pressure game, where experimentation costs least.

If I were planning a tournament to evaluate a national team's capacity, I would schedule it exactly this way. Put the hardest match first, when legs are fresh and the squad is at its strongest. Put the rotation game in the middle. Put the 'style contrast' test last. That is a deliberate trade-off.

But there is a flip side. When Thailand is the opener, the team will walk in at near-competitive intensity. No room for caution. Yellow cards will carry into match two. Small muscle strains will linger in the dressing room longer than a day. A win against Thailand does not buy peace for the Singapore fixture.

Then there is the money. Total prize money is 165,000 US dollars. The champion takes 100,000. Runner-up 40,000. The next teams take 20,000 and 2,000. Each group-stage win earns 1,000 dollars. This is a winner-takes-most structure. For U23 football, a hundred thousand dollars is a dream, not a gift. It will pull the starting XI closer to the strongest available than to the experimental.

I note these numbers not to fill the article. I note them because they explain why the 'friendly' label in modern football is often unreliable. A tournament with a league table, with prize money, with an opening match against a bitter rival, will not play like a training session.

So is this opponent triad genuinely calculated? According to the release, the tournament will help 'evaluate form, tactical adaptability and coordination between positions'. That sentence sounds like advertising, but placed inside the structure it holds up. Three teams, three different problems. Thailand is the technical, quick-transition problem. Qatar is the physical, possession-based problem. Singapore is the lower-intensity problem, where trials are affordable.

Within five days. I have written about tournaments with three completely different opponents in a short series. That is a more efficient test than three matches against similar opposition. If the coaching staff wants to know whether a player can withstand a different stylistic pressure, putting him against Qatar is the fastest route.

But let us be candid. Three round-robin matches are not knockout football. In this format there is no extra time, no penalties, no last-minute elimination pressure. AFC U23 qualifying and the U23 Asian Cup finals are both group-plus-knockout structures. If the tournament's stated purpose is to build toward the 2028 qualifiers, then this event delivers opponent diversity but not elimination-condition stress testing. That is a limit to acknowledge, not a flaw to hide.

I once watched Japan lose to Belgium at the 2026 World Cup. That match taught me that football sometimes does not follow the script of the fiftieth minute. Japan led 2-0, then lost 2-3. When my young colleague shouted into the microphone that 'we are about to make history', I stayed silent. I did not want to take away the joy of that moment. But inside, I knew. The last thirty minutes of a match are not an addendum to the first half; they are a different tide.

So too with Vietnam U23. Three matches, five days, no extra time. But there are small tides inside as well. The Singapore fixture in the middle is the point where points are most easily dropped, psychologically. That is the match where players must convince themselves the game matters. That is the match where a rotated XI can produce a result nobody predicted.

With a coach who has two days, the starting eleven will almost certainly be drawn from old training sessions. I call that the 'continuity core'. Players who have been in U23 camps, players at clubs with multiple call-ups, hold an advantage. That is not favoritism. That is the mathematics of time. A coach with five sessions cannot introduce a new player to the whole team. He needs people who already know the system.

I also think there will be two different starting XIs across the three matches. The Singapore fixture on 12 November is the most natural rotation game. That order lets the coach preserve legs for Qatar, while Singapore remains a match with points on the line. Actually, it is more than that. If you beat Thailand and beat Qatar, Singapore becomes secondary. If you beat Thailand and draw Singapore, Qatar becomes the final. The schedule generates a system of equations that nobody has solved before the ball rolls.

And one thing nobody has said: the age rule. Is this a strict U23 tournament, or U23 with overage allowances? This is completely undisclosed in the release. But it changes the entire picture. If overage slots exist, a coach can bring a centre-back who has played years of senior football to anchor the defensive block. If strict U23, the squad is far softer. I do not guess. I record this blank space so it is remembered.

There is one point I want to put against the current trend in journalism: we are busy asking 'who will win' while nobody has asked 'what do we learn if we lose'. Nobody writes about how an U23 tournament can teach a football nation about its own structure. Three opponents, five days, one pitch in Pleiku. That is a laboratory far cheaper than what is spent on a promotional campaign.

I remember a detail. In 2026, at the age of fifty-six, I was invited to write a series of poems about the J-League for a new sports site. On 15 April, at Yanmar Nagai Stadium, Cerezo Osaka hosted Kashiwa Reysol, final score 2-1. I chose to write about the eighty-third minute, when Hiroaki Okuno, number ten, volleyed from outside the box and the ball struck the underside of the crossbar. But I did not write about the goal. I wrote about his boot, lying out of place on the touchline after a missed shot that drew jeers in the fifty-second minute. The goal is what the camera captures. The boot is what only those who stay behind can see.

Here in Pleiku, I have no boot to write about yet. No player to name. But I know there will be. After the opening match on 10 November, someone will leave a boot behind. A substitute will look at an empty seat in the stands. There will be a final nod in the tunnel. Those are what I will record, not the scoreline.

And that is why I still follow football at sixty-five. The ball rolls through my years, and I copy it down in rhyme. The tide recedes and returns the sorrow, but it also returns an empty space in which to write. Sometimes a small tournament in a highland city can teach more than a European final.

The question that remains is not whether Vietnam U23 can beat Thailand U23. The question is: when the ball rolls at 19:00 on 10 November, will this team still have had only two days of assembly? If so, we will know what was truly trained in Pleiku. And if not, we will know something else: sometimes football is not decided on the pitch.

I write for some number nine, who does not know my name but will keep me up a few more nights. And I will check three sources before publishing any number about this match. Not out of fear of being wrong. But because I once took the blame for a young colleague in an editorial meeting, and I know what it feels like when the number you wrote does not hold.

Pleiku Stadium is empty in the late afternoon. That is the loudest sound before the cheers.