Vietnam vs Malaysia: History awaits Coach Kim Sang Sik

Coach Kim Sang Sik is only two unbeaten games short with the Vietnam national team to touch the 18-match unbeaten record established under his predecessor, compatriot Park Hang Seo. At present, Coach Kim Sang Sik's squad has 16 unbeaten matches, with 14 of them being wins.

Given the current development trend of Vietnamese football, Coach Kim Sang Sik is fully capable of conquering the milestones that Coach Park Hang Seo achieved during his two terms.

This is said because there is a fundamental difference in player resources between the two coaching periods of Coach Park Hang Seo and Coach Kim Sang Sik.

During his two terms leading the Vietnam national team from 2018 to the end of 2022, Coach Park Hang Seo almost exclusively worked with purely Vietnamese players. The number of Vietnamese diaspora players at that time was very limited and also did not possess significantly superior professional skills compared to domestic players, and Dang Van Lam was one of the rare diaspora players Coach Park utilized.

Now, thanks to the very open policy of VFF and VPF allowing the use of Vietnamese diaspora players, almost every club in V-League possesses diaspora players, not to mention a large number of diaspora players competing abroad but ready to return to Vietnam to play for national youth teams if given the opportunity.

In the most recent two years, 2025 and 2026, the number of Vietnamese diaspora players appearing in Vietnam, including cases of trial, playing, or participating in national youth team camps, has reached an uncountable level.

Even in this March FIFA Days training camp, fans witnessed up to 8 diaspora players gathering in the Vietnam national team, U23 Vietnam, and U19 Vietnam, a record number compared to past national team camps.

The diaspora players present in Vietnam at this stage mostly have very good professional skills, alongside most possessing ideal physical stature. This is a significant difference compared to previous periods, when many diaspora players returned home seeking opportunities solely because they could not compete in foreign environments.

Besides the resource of diaspora players, Coach Kim Sang Sik is also luckier than Coach Park Hang Seo in being able to use naturalized foreign players.

We all know how excellently Nguyen Xuan Son performed in Vietnam's journey to the ASEAN Cup 2024 championship, and while Xuan Son remains at his peak form, the Vietnam national team has just welcomed Do Hoang Hen, a Brazilian-origin foreign player from Barcelona's famed La Masia academy, who made his debut for Vietnam in the 3-0 victory over Bangladesh on March 26.

And if previously Coach Park Hang Seo struggled with the succession problem for the 2018 Changzhou U23 generation, Coach Kim Sang Sik no longer faces similar worries, as the U23 squad that just won bronze at the 2026 AFC U23 Asian Championship has not yet secured official positions in the national team, while VFF has already begun preparing for the near future with a new U23 generation comprising U21 players, and not far behind there is also the U17 team with promising talents.

Thus, Coach Kim Sang Sik has abundant and diverse options at hand, and fortunately, in his nearly two-year journey with Vietnamese football, Coach Kim has also shown himself to be a truly strategic commander with effective personnel management methods, so there are many reasons to believe that in the coming years with Vietnamese football, Coach Kim Sang Sik will successively conquer the milestones of his predecessor Park Hang Seo.