The 2021 AFF Championship has already started. Four matches have been played, with four countries managing to win their first match. But, despite winning their Matchday 1 games, a number of title contenders were not performing up to their standard. There are several notes from the first match that should improve not only them but also all the countries that compete in the AFF this year. So, what can all the participants improve?
First things first, they really need to come up with strategies that anticipate dangerous situations from set-piece scenarios. From the 11 goals that happened in the first match, 2 goals came from penalty kicks, one goal from a free-kick, and another one goal from a corner kick. It means almost 40% of the goals happened from set-pieces. That is if the penalty kick from Vietnam’s Vu Van Tanh wasn’t saved by Laos’s goalkeeper Keo-Oudone Souvannasangso. It showed how dangerous a set-piece scenario was for all the contestants.
Actually, all the teams should be able to avoid a dangerous situation from set-pieces if they don’t commit fouls easily, especially in a dangerous area. Unfortunately, that is something that didn’t come across the minds of everyone playing in Matchday 1. From the first four matches only, there were 86 fouls committed by every team. That means there are 21.5 fouls in every match. Almost all teams commit more than 10 fouls in a game. The team that gave the fewest fouls was Laos with 3 fouls, and one of which ends up with a penalty kick for Vietnam. Those statistics show the teams why they need to avoid committing many fouls that will end up in threatening situations for them.
Besides set-piece scenarios, all the participants have to solve their problems with crosses. Seven of the eleven goals in the first matches started with a pin-point cross from either side of the field. This is a big problem for all national teams from Southeast Asia. If they have that problem when they are against another Southeast Asian team who have a similar average height, it will definitely be a bigger problem when they have to face a national team from another continent with a better average height for their players.
The crossing scheme has already been a big problem for a long time for any national teams in Southeast Asia. They don’t have many players with height advantage to dominate aerial duels. It really gives the opponents big advantages against them. The biggest example happened in the third phase of qualification of the World Cup 2022, when Vietnam, as the only Southeast Asian country in the event, had to face many opponents from other continents. Seven of twelve goals their opponents scored happened because they could not win the aerial duel in crosses. The problem is also one of many reasons why Vietnam still cannot steal any points in the World Cup qualifiers. As long as those problems cannot be solved, it will always hinder any teams from Southeast Asia from advancing to the higher competition in the world.
And the last note from the first match is how to defend a counter-attack scheme against their opponent. This happened in a match between Cambodia against Malaysia and Singapore against Myanmar, when Cambodia and Myanmar -surprisingly- managed to control the game. Cambodia, who are against one of the title contenders, successfully dominated the game with 57% possession, while Myanmar, who are against hosts Singapore, controlled the game with 54% of ball possession.
Unfortunately, despite dominating the game, they cannot create many dangerous situations for their opponents. Instead, Malaysia and Singapore managed to steal their goals with fast counterattacks. The goals from Akhyar Rashid and Kogilesrawan Raj for Malaysia, and the first goal from Ikhsan Fandi, came after the players from Cambodia and Myanmar lost the ball from their possession. They made their opponents pay for the late transition from attack to defense.
After the first match of the AFF, all the participants would probably take the same notes. All the national teams should have a solution for those notes because all the notes are the basics of football strategies. We can hope to see improvements in the second match of the AFF Cup, when Myanmar has to face Timor-Leste and Philippines will have a battle against Singapore in group A tomorrow (07/12), followed by the battle between Malaysia against Laos and Indonesia against Cambodia in group B the day after tomorrow (08/12). Thailand and Vietnam will have a break before they have to face their opponents again on Matchday 3 of the 2021 AFF Championship.
