Vietnam U23 Depart at 00:15: The Nagoya Flight, Six Song Lam Nghe An Players and an Unclosed Squad Equation

The dawn in Ulsan never lies. At 61, I still pick up the phone at 4 a.m. – because Ulsan does not call to wish you good night.

But this time, the call came from Vietnam. A friend working logistics at Noi Bai airport sent me a single line: "They've left. Fifteen past midnight." I sat up, brewed a pot of tea, opened my laptop. Outside the window, Busan was still dark. In my head I saw more than twenty young faces walking through the boarding gate in silence, no flags, no drums, no one calling their names.

That was the departure moment of Vietnam U23, the squad of head coach Dinh Hong Vinh, heading to Asiad 2026. At 00:15 on September 13, the delegation set off for Japan. About five hours later, the members landed in Nagoya. They cleared procedures at the airport, moved to the hotel arranged by the organisers, and the first training session was scheduled for the afternoon of September 13.

It sounds simple. One flight, one hotel, one training session. But I have followed football long enough to know that the simplest things often hide the most complicated stories. The story of Vietnam U23 in Nagoya, from its very first breath, has three layers: a layer about people, a layer about time, and a layer about how Vietnamese football is still struggling between club and national team.

I chose to write about that night flight not because it is a big event. I chose to write because it is a small event, and in football, small events often tell more than big ones.

Asiad 2026 is a stage that Vietnamese youth football enters with a mixture of excitement and caution. In Group C, Coach Dinh Hong Vinh's team sits alongside Uzbekistan, the Philippines and Kuwait. The schedule is fixed: Kuwait on September 15, the Philippines on September 18, and the group stage closed by a meeting with Uzbekistan on September 22.

Reading those three lines, I immediately saw something few notice. The gap between the first and second matches is three days. Between the second and third, four days. Seven days for three matches in total. For a young team playing at Asiad intensity, that is no small physical puzzle. But it is also a structure that works in a very particular way, and I will return to this point later.

What matters is the squad context. As of now, Vietnam U23 still does not have a full complement. Two players, Nguyen Quoc Toan of Quy Nhon and Dang Tuan Phong of Hai Phong, will only be present in Nagoya just before the team's opening match at Asiad. In other words, they will join later than the rest of the delegation, and may only have time to get used to the pitch, the teammates and the new daily rhythm in a very short window.

Earlier, after winning 4-1 against Ha Noi FC in round 2 of the LPBank V-League 2026/27, six Song Lam Nghe An players managed to join up in time to board the flight to Japan with the whole squad. Those six arrived from a match that had just ended, carrying a still-racing heartbeat and still-warm legs.

In goal, Cao Van Binh showed good form. Up front, Quang Vinh made his mark with a brace inside just a few minutes. That win not only brought three points to the Nghe An club, it also gave six young players a timely dose of confidence to enter the Asiad 2026 journey.

Now let me talk about what I really want to say.

Vietnam U23's problem in Nagoya is not that the squad is short of players – it is that the squad exists in too many different physical states inside the same dressing room.

This is what the squad list will never tell you. You look at the paper, you see more than twenty names. You think it is a collective. But a collective only truly becomes a collective when everyone is in the same state. And in Nagoya, in those early September days, Vietnam U23 existed in at least three states.

The first group is the six Song Lam Nghe An players. They had just finished an official match in round 2 of the LPBank V-League 2026/27, beating Ha Noi FC 4-1. Let me emphasise: this is the state any coach dreams of. They have match rhythm. Their muscles are used to exploding, resting, then exploding again. Their nervous systems are used to making decisions under pressure. Cao Van Binh had just kept a clean sheet in a match his team won comfortably – a situation where concentration is not easy to hold. Quang Vinh had just scored a brace in a few minutes, meaning he was in what football calls the right wave.

The second group is the players who joined camp early, training together for a few days before boarding the plane. They are used to the coaching staff's programme, used to their teammates, but have not touched real match rhythm. They are the ones who trained the most and may be the ones most worn down in terms of ball feel.

The third group is Nguyen Quoc Toan of Quy Nhon and Dang Tuan Phong of Hai Phong. They arrive in Nagoya late, just before the opening match. Physically, they may be the freshest. In terms of connection, they are the most distant.

Three states, three different biological clocks, walking into a tournament with three matches in seven days.

And this is where I want you to look more closely at that number seven.

Suppose Vietnam U23 play their first match against Kuwait on September 15. The team will have three days off before facing the Philippines on September 18. Then four days off before facing Uzbekistan on September 22. In modern football, three days is the minimum time for muscles to recover after a high-intensity match. Four days is enough for full recovery. So in theory, this schedule is not harsh at all. It is even kinder than many other youth tournaments.

But theory and reality are two different things. The problem lies in how many real match minutes the team will carry into the first game.

Let us do the maths. If the six Song Lam Nghe An players have just played a full 90 minutes in round 2 of the V-League, they will need at least 48 to 72 hours for full recovery. If they fly on the night of September 13, train lightly that afternoon, train again on the 14th, then on the 15th they step onto the pitch in what is called a half-recovered, half-sleep-deprived state. Not bad. But not perfect.

The early-camp group is the opposite. They may have accumulated enough volume, but they lack the one thing no training session can create: the feeling of actually playing.

And here is where I want to tell a story.

There are phone calls that last only three minutes, yet change an entire summer. I once received such a call in 2026, from a source in Ulsan, at 4 a.m., when I was 52. The person on the other end told me that a key striker of the team was secretly negotiating with a Middle Eastern club, on a proposed salary double his current one. It took me eight hours to verify through three independent channels, record the call, and check the K League's financial regulations. My article went live at 8 a.m. on a sports platform, reaching more than one hundred and twenty thousand reads within a day. But what I learned was not whether the information was true or false.

What I learned was this: in football, the thing that decides everything is never on paper.

It is in the state.

And the state of Vietnam U23 right now is a collective running at three different speeds.

I have spent many years watching youth matches, and I have noticed a pattern. In short tournaments, teams with many players who have just finished their domestic season often start slower but last longer. Conversely, teams that gather for long periods often start well but fade in the third match. With Vietnam U23, the six Song Lam Nghe An players bring an advantage few see: they are the only ones in the squad who have played real football in the past two weeks.

Think about that seriously. In the squad, who has tasted contact in an official match in round 2 of the V-League? The six Song Lam Nghe An players. Who scored in an official match? Quang Vinh, with a brace. Who kept a clean sheet in an official match? Cao Van Binh.

Football is not a sport of training a lot. It is a sport of being in the right rhythm.

Now let us talk about the opponents. Group C comprises Uzbekistan, the Philippines and Kuwait. None of them is a comfortable gift in any sense.

Uzbekistan is a name any Southeast Asian youth team must reckon with. They have physical foundations, a structured youth development system, and a regular presence in continental finals. The match against Uzbekistan on September 22 will close the group stage, and if Vietnam U23 need points there, they will have to arrive with intact legs.

The Philippines in youth football is a rising collective, with many players built at foreign academies. They are no longer an easy beat as they were a decade ago.

Kuwait is the first opponent, on September 15. This is the match where Vietnam U23 need a positive result from the start, because the psychology of a short tournament depends heavily on the opening game.

And this is where I want to talk about Thanh Nhan.

I have never met Thanh Nhan in person. But I have read what he does on the pitch, and from the way my logistics friend at the airport described it, he was the one standing at the aircraft door at 00:15, counting every teammate as they walked through. For a team short on numbers, the captain does not only need to play well. The captain needs to keep the dressing room from breaking.

I witnessed something similar in 2026. Son Heung-min was savaged in 2026, and I learned to see people not through public opinion. After the defeat to Mexico at the World Cup, people said he could only run and could not score. I sat reading thousands of comments on forums and fan pages, and I realised something: most of the critics had not watched the whole match. They were reacting to a moment, not a cycle. He had covered more than eleven kilometres in that game, more than anyone in the team. I wrote a three-thousand-word analysis showing that the criticism was unfair. The article was widely shared, and afterwards he himself said in a press conference that he had read the support from home.

That is also how I look at Vietnam U23 today. Do not judge this team by a friendly, by a thin squad list, by a night flight. Look at the cycle.

And that cycle begins in Nagoya, with the afternoon training on September 13, on a pitch the players will touch only hours after landing.

In Nagoya, September is the month of humidity. The air is heavy, sweat does not evaporate quickly, and muscles work harder to dissipate heat. For a team that has just endured a five-hour flight and a sleepless night, the first training session is the most important moment for the coaching staff to sense where each player stands.

I have reported on summer tours, and I have always held a view: pre-season friendly tours turn clubs into circuses and turn human physical capacity into sellable merchandise. I do not like it. But Asiad, with a U23 team, is a different story. Here, there are no tickets to sell, no customers. Only young players and an opportunity.

But that opportunity is constrained by the domestic calendar. Six Song Lam Nghe An players had to finish round 2 of the V-League before departing. That is a fact Vietnamese football must face squarely. In many countries with developed football, when a youth national team calls up players for a continental tournament, clubs are obliged to release them earlier. In Vietnam, we are still juggling two forces: clubs needing points in the domestic league, the national team needing people for a continental tournament.

And now we arrive at the part where I want to go against the mainstream narrative.

The mainstream narrative of the past two days is this: Vietnam U23 are at a disadvantage because the squad is incomplete. Two players arrive late, six arrive after playing the domestic league, the team lacks preparation time.

I do not fully believe that narrative. Not because I want to please anyone. But because the data I have gathered over the years does not support it.

The blind spot of the incomplete-squad narrative is that it assumes training a lot, training early, training in numbers is beneficial. But in modern football, a few days of pre-tournament training usually only creates a sense of safety for the coaching staff, not form for the players.

I have watched many Asian youth tournaments. And I noticed something interesting: teams that have just finished their domestic season, arriving at the national team in a hot state, often convert chances better in the first thirty minutes of the opening match. They decide faster. They hesitate less. They are less overwhelmed.

Conversely, teams that gather for long periods tend to play more tightly but also more mechanically. They run the drills correctly, but when they fall behind, they lack the instinct to break the structure.

In the current Vietnam U23, the six Song Lam Nghe An players are exactly the group carrying that instinct. Cao Van Binh had just kept a clean sheet in a match his team won 4-1. Quang Vinh had just scored two goals in a few minutes – a situation requiring instant sharpness. Those qualities cannot come from a training session at a centre. They come from a real match.

As for the two late arrivals, Nguyen Quoc Toan and Dang Tuan Phong, I want to ask a different question. Instead of worrying about them, why not ask: could their arriving in Nagoya just before the opening match bring a psychological advantage?

A player who arrives late has no time to worry about a starting spot. They have no time to compare themselves with teammates. They enter the tournament in a state of having nothing to lose. In youth football, that is sometimes the best state.

Of course, I am not saying this is certainly good. I am only saying that the story of an incomplete squad being a disadvantage is far simpler than reality.

And there is one more point few mention. In a tournament with three group matches, the team that distributes its resources sensibly across matches will go further than the team with the strongest lineup but squeezed dry. For Vietnam U23, having six players who just played and two who arrived late actually creates a wide range of states. If the coaching staff is wise enough, they can rotate by state rather than by reputation.

That is a hidden advantage. And I believe Coach Dinh Hong Vinh sees it.

I also want to mention something I am often criticised for raising: expected goals. Many will use it to analyse Song Lam Nghe An's 4-1 win over Ha Noi FC. They will say the team won by luck, or won deservedly, based on the number. I have said this many times and I will say it again: expected goals has been overused. It cannot explain a player's decision in the eighty-eighth minute, cannot explain why a defender chooses to step up rather than stay, and certainly cannot explain why a young team can hold concentration in an opening match in Nagoya.

What explains those things is people. It is Quang Vinh's brace in a few minutes. It is Cao Van Binh's calm in goal. It is six players arriving from a win and carrying something no training session can create.

So what will September 15 teach us?

I do not know the result. But I know what I will be watching. I will watch how Vietnam U23 play the first twenty minutes against Kuwait. If they find their rhythm faster than other Vietnam U23 sides I have watched, then the incomplete-squad story needs rewriting.

And if they start slowly, I will not rush to conclude. Because I have learned one thing from Son Heung-min, from sleepless nights in Ulsan, from 4 a.m. calls: see people across a cycle, not across a moment.

And one more thing. Kim Min-jae could cancel a contract, but no one can cancel the trust I place in him. I place my trust in those young people who boarded a plane at 00:15 in silence, no flags, no drums. They do not know I am watching. But I am watching.

Modern football runs on money, but the dawn call runs on trust. And for Vietnam U23 in Nagoya, that trust will be tested not by a contract, but by three matches in seven days.

Fans see a thin squad list. I see the sleepless nights behind it.

And at 61, I still pick up the phone at 4 a.m. – because Ulsan does not call to wish you good night. But this time, the caller was Nagoya.