What are the opportunities for U9 Gia Bao Hai Duong?

Initial difficulties...

On August 9, the entire Gia Bao Hai Duong U9 team will fly to Pleiku City (Gia Lai) to prepare for the final round of the National U9 Football Tournament - Toyota Cup 2024.

This is the youngest football tournament in the competition system of the Vietnam Football Federation, also a tournament with great competition, high professional quality, because many clubs, football centers, provinces, cities train the U9 generation in a professional direction. All of the above reasons make many people worry that U9 Gia Bao Hai Duong will face major obstacles.

In June 2024, U9 Gia Bao Hai Duong was officially established to the surprise of many people, because this is a children's football team that is not part of the training system of the Provincial Sports Training, Coaching and Competition Center, does not use the budget but is sponsored by Mr. Nguyen Dinh Giang, currently the Director of Gia Bao Company Limited (Hai Duong City). To select players, Mr. Giang organized a U9 tournament to discover, receive and train.

Mr. Giang said that the training is not too difficult because Hai Duong has a team of young coaches, who are well-trained and passionate about youth and children's football. The most difficult thing at first is to convince families to let their children stay in the center. After convincing the families, they have to continue to encourage the young players who are not yet independent, do not know how to take care of themselves, many of whom have never been away from their families. Compared to the U11 players in the Hai Duong province training system who have training grounds and dormitories, the U9 players do not have these things.

After many calculations, Mr. Nguyen Dinh Giang decided to bring all the players to his private house - a large villa in Dinh Long villa area (Hai Duong city) to eat and stay. The logistics and accommodation of the players are also taken care of by Mr. Giang's wife - Ms. Le Thi Hong. Every day, the players go to and from practice 4 times by the director's personal car and the coaches' cars. Thus, the most difficult problem of accommodation and practice has been solved.

The training of players was assigned by Mr. Nguyen Dinh Giang to coach Nguyen Hung Hoang. This is a young coach, well-trained, having many years of coaching U10 Tu Ky to win the U10 Football Championship of Hai Duong province. In addition to Nguyen Hung Hoang, the coaching staff also has 2 other members who are goalkeeper and fitness coaches.

After about 1 month of training, the players have made clear progress in terms of technique, competitive mentality, tactics, and self-discipline in training and accommodation. Having overcome the initial difficulties, the team has become more and more disciplined and is aiming for the national tournament for the first time.

...to aim high

According to the announcement of the Vietnam Football Federation, the National U9 Football Tournament - Toyota Cup 2024 will take place from mid-August, including 32 teams from all 3 regions of the North, Central and South. Among these, there are a few teams participating in the tournament for the first time, including U9 Gia Bao Hai Duong.

To reach this tournament, the U9 Gia Bao Hai Duong coaching board, in addition to organizing training and coaching in Hai Duong, also continuously took the team to friendly matches to accumulate experience and competitive spirit.

According to coach Nguyen Hung Hoang, U9 Gia Bao Hai Duong has competed with high-quality or professionally trained teams such as Hanoi Police, Hung Yen, Phu Tho... and achieved good results. In particular, the championship of the 2024 Championship organized by the Thanh Hoa Provincial Football Federation at the end of June was a great encouragement for the players of U9 Gia Bao Hai Duong.

It is known that before leaving for Pleiku, U9 Gia Bao Hai Duong boldly set a goal of reaching the semi-finals, which means they will win a medal. This is a high and difficult goal, especially for a team participating in the tournament for the first time. However, both Mr. Nguyen Dinh Giang and the coaching staff have a basis for setting this goal. That is, the 17 players in the team have quite even quality, the most prominent of which are names such as Truong Anh, Hoang Tien, Minh Duc, Duc Tien...

Before leaving for the national tournament, all players were sent back to their hometowns by U9 Gia Bao Hai Duong to play in the district-level U10 tournament, preparing for the Hai Duong province U10 tournament which also took place in August. According to statistics from coach Nguyen Hung Hoang, most of the U9 Gia Bao Hai Duong players when returning to their hometowns made important contributions to the team. Many of them contributed to the championship for the team, such as: Duc Anh, Thanh Cong helped Cong Lac commune win the Tu Ky U10 championship; Duc Tai, Quoc Bao helped Hai Tan ward U10 win the Hai Duong city championship; Hoang Tien helped Cam Hoang U10 win the Cam Giang district championship...

With many years of experience leading children's football teams, coach Nguyen Hung Hoang shared before the national championship: U9 Gia Bao Hai Duong will face certain difficulties in terms of competition experience, but also has advantages, which are a relatively good physical foundation, a mentality of not being afraid of any team and a desire to win. These will be important foundations for U9 Gia Bao Hai Duong to be able to bring home achievements in the first time participating in the tournament.