Southeast Asia Vietnam

The J.League Revolution – A Mere Pipe Dream?

From leading the league at the mid-way point of last season and finishing 3rd at the end of 2020, Sai Gon FC found themselves stuck at the wrong end of the V.League 1 table this season. The 2021 off-season saw the club from Ho Chi Minh City undergoing a major face-lift with a majority of their players from 2020 being shown the door, but instead of remaining competitive at the top of the league table, Sai Gon found themselves staring at the barrel of relegation.

The 2020 season saw Sai Gon notching their best-ever season in their history, qualifying to the 2021 AFC Cup with a 3rd placed finish.

Previously the men in pink had never finished above 5th place ever since they were promoted to the V.League 1 in 2015, finishing 7th in 2016, 5th in 2017 and 2019, and 8th in the 2018 season – Sai Gon’s lowest finish so far.

The 2020 season also saw a monumental occasion for Sai Gon as they signed up a partnership with J.League 1 giants FC Tokyo in February. The partnership saw the two sides establishing a football academy within Ho Chi Minh City as well as sharing scouting knowledge and creating an economic and cultural bridge between Vietnam and Japan.

The partnership with FC Tokyo acts as a gateway for Sai Gon to lean themselves towards the Japanese football culture. Having replaced Vu Tien Thanh as club president at the beginning of this year, Tran Hoa Binh envisioned that Sai Gon would embrace the J.League philosophy as they aim to become the newest force in Vietnamese football.

To that end, once that successful 2020 campaign came to a close, Sai Gon decided to perform some major changes to their squad. From the 28 players who represented the pink side of Ho Chi Minh City in 2020, 16 of them were shown the door, including all three foreign players in Sai Gon’s book.

Most crucially of all, those 16 players included Sai Gon’s key players for the 2020 season. Captain Nguyen Quoc Long’s excellent leadership throughout 2020 was repaid with a ticket out of the Thong Nhat Stadium, while Trinh Duc Loi, Ngo Xuan Toan, and Nguyen Dinh Bao were sent packing to relegated Quang Nam FC.

Le Quoc Phuong was sold off to Thanh Hoa FC, while Than Thanh Tin was allowed to waltz his way into city rivals Ho Chi Minh City FC as Nguyen Vu Tin was sent out on loan to 2nd tier Pho Hien FC.

Sai Gon’s foreign trio – the deadly Brazilian duo of Pedro Paulo and Geovane as well as South Korean Ahn Byung-keon – were also not spared from the club’s post-season purge.

Sai Gon allowed both Pedro and Geovane to walk out on them to Hanoi, with Pedro heading for defending champions Viettel FC and Geovane being snapped up by Hanoi FC. Reliable defender Ahn made his way to newly promoted Topenland Binh Dinh.

With Sai Gon’s key foreign trio from 2020 out of the door – neither of them had any J.League experience, mind you – the space was available for Hoa Binh to inject some much-needed J-experience into the squad.

Yokohama FC’s Daisuke Matsui was the first to walk into the Thong Nhat Stadium, carrying with him a glittering career that saw him play in Europe for the likes of Le Mans FC, AS Saint-Etienne, Slavia Sofia and Lechia Gdansk and represent the Japan national team 31 times.

Hiroyuki Takasaki was next, brought into the Thong Nhat from FC Gifu with a wealth of experience in the J.League pyramid. The veteran striker was hoped to link up with fellow veteran and new signing Do Merlo to recreate Pedro and Geovane’s devastating partnership that had brought success to Sai Gon in 2020.

South Korean Woo Sang-ho, Sai Gon’s third foreign recruit, also had his fair share of J.League experience, with the midfielder being signed from Tochigi SC and having represented both FC Gifu and Ehime FC during his career.

Last but not least is Japanese midfielder Ryutaro Karube, who had also honed his skills at FC Gifu prior to becoming a journeyman of some sorts in Southeast Asia, having represented Chainat Hornbill, Perseru Serui, Thanh Hoa, Kuala Lumpur City, and Suphanburi FC.

Also arriving at the Thong Nhat were the aforementioned Do Merlo and Nguyen Trung Dai Loc, both of whom were naturalized players being brought in from Duoc Nam Ha Nam Dinh. However, Trung Dai Loc was registered as a foreign player using his original name Thiago Papel and under his original Brazilian nationality, thus forcing Karube out of the first team and into Sai Gon’s community outreach team. Karube was apparently being saved up for Sai Gon’s AFC Cup campaign, hence he was not registered into Sai Gon’s league squad.

Last but not least, another Nam Dinh player in Tran Manh Cuong was signed by Sai Gon, while Nguyen Hoang Quoc Chi was brought in from Quang Nam and Nguyen Thanh Cong made the jump across the Ho Chi Minh City-Sai Gon divide.

2021 started off on a positive note – Sai Gon managed to etch two wins in their opening three matches, with a 1-0 defeat away at Binh Dinh sandwiching two 1-0 wins over Hoang Anh Gia Lai and Song Lam Nghe An.

However, as the COVID-19 pandemic forced the league to be suspended for the first time at the end of January, head coach Tien Thanh was reassigned to the PVF academy to oversee youth development there, with general manager Masahiro Shimoda being given Tien Thanh’s old job – yet another move to support Hoa Binh’s J.League-oriented dreams.

And whilst Tien Thanh’s presence managed to offset the huge turnover within the Sai Gon squad during the off-season to some extent, Shimoda’s appointment effectively threw away the team chemistry that Tien Thanh had built over the 2020 season. The former Renofa Yamaguchi head coach failed to win any of his three matches with the men in pink, losing 1-0 to both city rivals Ho Chi Minh City and close neighbors Becamex Binh Duong before a 3-0 hammering at the hands of Nam Dinh at the Thong Nhat.

The Nam Dinh drubbing prompted Hoa Binh to take action almost immediately, replacing Shimoda with assistant coach Phung Thanh Phuong, however the damage has been done. Underneath Phung’s leadership Sai Gon notched two more wins, however they lost three more times and drew once, leaving the men in pink stranded second-bottom as the league goes into another COVID-enforced suspension in May.

With the departures of Pedro and Geovane, getting goals was Sai Gon’s biggest issue for 2021, with Merlo being the only goalscorer of the team until Round 11. Despite literally carrying the entire team by his shoulders throughout most of the league’s first half, Merlo did not find the net that much, scoring only three goals prior to Round 11 and scoring a further one more afterwards.

Defender Bui Xuan Quy and midfielder Manh Cuong scored Sai Gon’s only other goals in the league so far this season, with each player scoring once.

Having only able to score 6 goals throughout the first half of the 2021 season, Sai Gon’s impotence in front of goal were further worsened by their porous backline, with the men in pink having already conceded 14 goals at this point of the season. Sai Gon may not have the worst defense in the league, but their awful scoring record made their goal difference of -8 the joint-worse of the top flight this season, a medal of shame shared with rock-bottom SLNA.

The J.League imports were also disappointing – Matsui’s 40-year old legs meant that he couldn’t keep up with the fast-paced and congested nature of the V.League 1, while both Hiroyuki and Woo did not done enough to impress their head coaches throughout the season, with the former possibly due to his 35-year old self unable to keep up with the league’s hustle and bustle.

And while the season’s still far from over, Sai Gon will have to do their best in the upcoming relegation group games to avoid the dreaded drop to the V.League 2, while at the same time juggling their continental debut this June and July which sees them fly out to Singapore to take on hosts Lion City Sailors, Malaysia’s Kedah Darul Aman, and Indonesia’s Persipura Jayapura in the AFC Cup group stage.

What can we learn from Sai Gon’s plight?

Firstly, it’s never wise to take out a good chunk of your squad for the upcoming season and expect the replacements to do as well as them in the short term. What Hoa Binh wants is a revolution and revolutions don’t come swiftly. It will be better for him to implement some cornerstones of his J.League revolution first, let them settle into the existing squad, before overhauling them little by little, instead of doing an outright facelift like what Sai Gon did in the pre-season.

This leads us to our second point – the importance of team chemistry. Tien Thanh may have assumed a double role as club president and head coach for the previous season, but he managed to gel together his squad quite nicely and established a system that enabled them to click perfectly. Sure Sai Gon’s overhaul in the pre-season would do little help but their two wins underneath Tien Thanh this season, as scrappy as they were, still followed the head coach’s plans from A to Z.

When Tien Thanh left for PVF and Shimoda came in, the Japanese brought in his own sets of philosophies that sent the players into disarray. They barely clicked into Tien Thanh’s system and now Shimoda is introducing a system of his own that the players must adapt to as soon as possible.

Having worked underneath Shimoda, Phung would undoubtedly learn a thing or two from the Japanese head coach and implement them to the team after he had taken over as head coach. This sense of continuity is vital should teams fail to learn their chemistry soon enough.

Last but not least is Sai Gon’s over-reliance on aging players. The likes of Merlo, Hiroyuki, and Matsui were entering the wrong side of their 30s when they arrive at the Thong Nhat, with Matsui even hitting his 40s. Compare and contrast with Pedro and Geovane, who joined the men in pink during the prime of their careers.

Whilst veteran players can provide valuable experience to their younger peers, their older physiology meant that they are slowly declining in terms of performance and eventually they will no longer be able to keep up with the heat of the competition. Sure Merlo can score a couple of goals but the task of aiding him in terrorizing defenses shouldn’t fall into the shoulders of an aging player like Hiroyuki, but a more exciting prospect in his prime that would serve as an excellent foil for the veteran Merlo.

Teams from other leagues often combine veterans and players in their prime as their foreign contingent and although Woo is still in his prime at 28, the fact that the foreigners in Sai Gon’s attacking line are well past their prime should raise some alarm bells for Hoa Binh and the club’s management.

In the end there’s nothing wrong with having ambitions. Hoa Binh’s dreams of creating a club that’s as well-managed as their J.League counterparts is something that is worth trying by clubs all around Southeast Asia.

However there’s such a thing of managing your ambitions in moderation. Much planning must be done to ensure that the club in question will be well-run both on the pitch and off it. If one jumps the gun, said ambitions would end up sending the club careening towards a dark and treacherous path that might end those ambitions before it could start.

It’s still not too late for Sai Gon to rectify their mistakes. Should they plan their ambitions wisely in the future, their J.League revolution would no longer be a pipe dream.