Because the North Korean female team unexpectedly withdrew from Group A, the third qualifying round of the 2020 Tokyo Olympic women’s football, just with a single victory right in the first match against the Myanmar female team, the Vietnamese female team wrote its name in the history for the first time in the playoffs of the four strongest teams.
Ngan Thi Van Su (13) scored the only goal for Vietnamese female team.
For the efforts to win all 3 points against the Myanmar female team, coach Mai Duc Chung launched the strongest offensive squad with the appearance of the trio Hai Yen, Huynh Nhu and Tuyet Dung in the attack.
The Vietnamese and Myanmar female teams seemed to know each other so well after the confrontations. Therefore, right after the opening whistle, the two teams joined with extreme concentration. Both played enthusiastically and repeatedly performed close-range attacks on both goals. With a somewhat superior level, the Vietnamese women’s football has, however, actively controlled the ball and attacked. The girls of coach Mai Duc Chung continuously made waves of difficulties towards the goal of Mya Phu Ngon. Given the dangers in the attacks of the Vietnamese girls, coach Yee Yee Oo triggered Myanmar’s deep defensive strategy, giving the red-shirt central forwards few opportunities to break into the penalty area.
Hence, during the first 45 minutes, the ball mostly rolled on the opponent’s court. Although in this first half, the Vietnamese female team had a few opportunities, Huynh Nhu or Bich Thuy or other outstanding players could not take advantage of these opportunity to score goals. Notably, in the 23rd minute, the Vietnamese female team played better with a high shot from the middle by captain Huynh Nhu (9). Regrettably, the ball went off the right-wing column out of the goal of goalkeeper Phu Ngon (1). The same situation took place less than a minute after taking advantage of the pressure to control the pitch, Huynh Nhu (9) speedily run and then threw the ball up for Pham Hai Yen (12) to finish near the goal but failed. In the 40th minute, it seemed that the Vietnamese team had a goal when Ngan Thi Van Su (13) shot on the goal of Myanmar but unfortunately goalkeeper Phu Ngon (1) prevented it successfully.
The Vietnamese women’s football team officially won the 2020 Olympic Tokyo play-off ticket.
Despite being in a stalemate in the first half, at the beginning of the second half, coach Mai Duc Chung decided to change personnel, launching Nguyen Thi Van (18) and Tuyet Ngan (20) in replacement for Duong Thi Van (16) and Hai Yen (12), respectively, to strengthen the attack force.
With these changes, the Vietnamese Female team kept an overwhelming game with many dangerous attacking situations. It took, however, until the 63rd minute for the Vietnamese girls to penetrate the opponent’s defensive net. In a fixed penalty situation on the left-wing, the ball was brought in the right range for central forward Ngan Thi Van Su (13) to score with a great header with goal 1-0 in the burst of the red-shirt team.
Suddenly defeated, in the last minutes of the match, the Myanmar female team actively increased the squad to find an equalizer. However, the Vietnamese women’s defense line certainly played. In the 83rd minute, the Vietnamese female team had almost an extra goal when Tuyet Dung had a dangerous long shot which was then prevented by goalkeeper Mya Phu Ngon. In the end, the Vietnamese female team won 1-0.
With 3 points against the Myanmar, Vietnam and Korea officially won the play-off tickets to the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. The match between Vietnam and South Korea to be taken place at 3:00 pm on February 9 is just to rank the first and second class teams in Group A. Currently, each team has 3 points but the Korean team is No. 1 because of the better goal difference (+7 vs +1).
M.T