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Cựu HLV U23 Myanmar: Chỉ có phép màu mới ngăn Việt Nam vào bán kết AFF Cup

01/01/2023 06:00 (GMT+7)

Bốn năm làm việc ở bóng đá Myanmar, HLV Velizar Popov vô cùng bất ngờ khi chứng kiến các tuyển thủ của quốc gia này đã trình diễn bộ mặt bạc nhược tại AFF Cup 2022. Ông Popov nhận định đội khách không có cơ hội để ngăn Việt Nam thẳng tiến vào bán kết với ngôi đầu bảng B.

HLV Velizar Popov từng có 4 năm dẫn dắt U23 Myanmar và hiện tại đang làm việc ở CLB Thanh Hóa. ẢNH: VY KHÁNH

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Trước khi 2 đội gặp nhau ở lượt trận cuối bảng B diễn ra vào 19g30 tối 3-1 trên sân Mỹ Đình, Việt Nam đang tạm dẫn đầu với 7 điểm và chỉ cần không thua đậm Myanmar sẽ giành vé vào bán kết. Trong khi đối thủ sớm dừng bước sau 1 điểm vỏn vẹn kiếm được từ 4 trận đã qua.

Trò chuyện với chúng tôi, HLV Velizar Popov, người từng có 4 năm làm việc với tư cách “thuyền trưởng” U23 Myanmar, chia sẻ: “Hai đội đang ở thế đối nghịch. Việt Nam gần như 99% đã vào bán kết, và chỉ có phép màu mới ngăn họ không được quyền đi tiếp. Còn Myanmar đã gây nhiều thất vọng và khiến tôi rất bất ngờ. Với tôi, Myanmar có những cầu thủ tốt với chất lượng kỹ thuật tuyệt vời, lẽ ra phải chơi tốt hơn hiện tại. Nếu Việt Nam là đội mạnh nhất bảng thì Myanmar phải chiến đấu để nhì bảng. Nhưng rõ ràng, khi không thể thắng Lào trên sân nhà thì có điều gì đó rất không ổn ở đội tuyển quốc gia này. Tất nhiên, với tất cả sự tôn trọng của tôi đối với Lào, một đội tuyển đã có nhiều tiến bộ trong vài năm qua”.

Tuyển thủ Myanmar Lwin Moe Aung (áo trắng) từng thi đấu ở môn bóng đá nam SEA Games 31 trên sân Phú Thọ. ẢNH: DŨNG PHƯƠNG

* Đã hết cơ hội đi tiếp, Myanmar sẽ đến Hà Nội thi đấu với tâm thế nào?

– HLV Velizar Popov: Rất khó để dự đoán chính xác Myanmar sẽ tiếp cận trận đấu này thế nào. Tâm trạng của họ có lẽ đang tiêu cực sau thất bại nặng nề ở giải đấu năm nay. Một trong những vấn đề lớn với các cầu thủ là tâm lý, vì họ không cảm thấy thoải mái, mất đi sự tự tin. Nhưng điều này sẽ trở nên nguy hiểm nếu Việt Nam đánh giá thấp Myanmar. Bởi nếu các cầu thủ của đội khách giải phóng được về tâm lý và cống hiến hết mình thì có thể gây bất ngờ cho mọi đối thủ. Myanmar có những cầu thủ chất lượng để làm điều này nếu họ tự tin và tin tưởng vào chiến thuật của HLV đề ra. Tôi chắc chắn họ sẽ thi đấu cố gắng hết sức.

Tôi không nghĩ Myanmar sẽ có nhiều thay đổi về đội hình ở trận đấu với Việt Nam. Sau kết quả không tốt trước Lào, họ cần thể hiện điều tích cực khi gặp Việt Nam. Nếu có một trận thua nặng nề thì có thể gây ra những thay đổi lớn trong Liên đoàn và đội tuyển. Sau 4 năm làm việc ở U23 Myanmar, tôi biết rõ hơn ai hết các cầu thủ Myanmar, với tiềm năng của họ to lớn thế nào. Tôi có thể đảm bảo đó không phải lỗi của các cầu thủ. Vấn đề của đội tuyển này còn sâu xa hơn nhiều và tôi không muốn đi sâu vào chi tiết.

Ông Popov khẳng định Việt Nam sẽ thẳng tiến vào bán kết AFF Cup 2022 với ngôi đầu bảng B. ẢNH: MINH HOÀNG

* Việt Nam đá sau bảng A và được quyền chọn lựa đối thủ ở bán kết. Theo ông, đâu là sự chọn lựa tốt nhất của thầy trò HLV Park Hang-seo?

– Không có gì nghi ngờ để khẳng định Việt Nam là đội rất mạnh không chỉ ở bảng B mà còn cả AFF Cup 2022. Tôi chắc chắn Việt Nam sẽ đứng đầu bảng đấu này. Còn nghĩ sẽ gặp ai ở bán kết, tôi không thể dự đoán. Đối với tôi, Việt Nam là đội được yêu thích nhất để vô địch giải đấu năm nay và tôi tin rằng họ sẽ làm được.

Việt Nam có điểm mạnh về thể lực, có thể nói là một trong những đội có thể lực mạnh nhất AFF Cup 2022. Họ tổ chức phòng ngự rất kỷ luật. Về tấn công cực kỳ nguy hiểm trong các tình huống cố định và cả các pha không chiến lẫn tạt vào vòng cấm. Cầu thủ Việt Nam năng nổ trong các pha tranh chấp cá nhân. Nhưng tinh thần mới là vũ khí quan trọng nhất của các học trò HLV Park Hang-se-o. Tôi rất thích tâm lý và sự quyết tâm của họ.

HỮU THÀNH

Từ khoá

đội tuyển Việt Namđội tuyển Myanmarviệt nam vs myanmarAFF Cup 2022AFF CupVelizar Popov

Kelantan x Popov 2016 | #KaranganBolaSepak by Amirul Radin

Happy Belated Birthday to Coach Velizar Popov! As a Kelantan fan, we have had such a roller coaster life since 2009. Starting 2014, so much inconsistency on and off the pitch was really bad for us as fans and as The Red Warrior brand. 2016 we stated rock bottom, meaning only won a few games at the start of the season. Team has so much talent but feels like the coach then K. Devan couldn’t get the best from them.

In May 2016. Kelantan hired Velizar Popov. Who had an impressive CV coming in. He looked scary and mean but after some time. Could see that’s just how much he is passionate about football. And that translated on the pitch. Kelantan rebuilt nicely within a short space of time. Looked like he had a lot of emphasis on physical aspect and being organised. Remember like any coaching some in, mid season. They inherit squads and they only can do much. But what a job well done.

Super League finish of 4th was impressive. But disappointed we didn’t go far into the Malaysia Cup. Despite not winning that game, the 3-3 against Selangor at Stadium Shah Alam was memorable for me. A lot of hard work from the team. Blazhe Illjoski, Brendan Gan, Wander Luiz, Wan Zack, Indra, Gomis, Faris Shah were great in the Malaysia Cup run. in the quarter final against PDRM, was a stupid game. Kelantan would have won that first game 9 times of out 10!

Sadly he didn’t renew for 2017. But in that 6 month spell he made an impression with the Kelantan fans and Malaysian football. Again he may seem to be like a person you would be afraid of but gave us Kelantan fans a lot of good football as well as Malaysian fans an insight of what kind of a funny and passionate person he is! Credit to Tifo Arena for doing so!

သတင်း
မြန်မာလူငယ်ကြယ်ပွင့်တို့ကိုဆက်လက်ဦးဆောင်မယ့်ပဲ့ကိုင်ရှင်ရဲ့ရင်ဖွင့်သံ
BY TOTALSPORTS01
December 24, 2020
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မြန်မာ့လူငယ်လက်ရွေးစင်အသင်းရဲ့ နည်းပြဖြစ်သူ ပိုပေါဗ့်ဟာ မြန်မာဘောလုံးအဖွဲ့ချုပ်ရဲ့ သက်တမ်းတိုးဖို့ ကမ်းလှမ်းချက်ကို လက်ခံခဲ့ပြီလို့ သိရပြီး မြန်မာလူငယ်တွေကို ဆက်လက်တာဝန်ယူခွင့်ရခဲ့တဲ့အတွက် ကျေနပ်နေပါတယ်။

နည်းပြကြီး ပိုပေါဗ့်ဟာ မြန်မာယူ-၂၂အသင်းကို ပြီးခဲ့တဲ့ ဆီးဂိမ်းစ်မှာ ကြေးတံဆိပ်ရရှိပြီး အောင်မြင်အောင် စွမ်းဆောင်ပေးနိုင်ခဲ့ကာ နောက်လာမယ့် ၂၀၂၁ခုနှစ်ကုန်အထိ မြန်မာလူငယ်အသင်းကို ဆက်လက်တာဝန်ယူသွားရမှာ ဖြစ်ပါတယ်။

ဘူဂေးလ်ရီးယားလူမျိုး နည်းပြဖြစ်တဲ့ ပိုပေါဗ့်ဟာ မြန်မာလူငယ်အသင်းကို လာမယ့် ၂၀၂၁ခုနှစ် အတွင်းမှာ ကျင်းပမယ့် ဆီးဂိမ်းစ်ပြိုင်ပွဲ၊ AFC ယူ-၂၃ချန်ပီယံရှစ် ခြေစစ်ပွဲနဲ့ အာဆီယံယူ-၂၂ ချန်ပီယံရှစ်တို့မှာ ဦးဆောင်သွားမှာ ဖြစ်ပါတယ်။

မြန်မာလူငယ်တို့ကို ဆက်လက် ပဲ့ကိုင်ဦးမယ့်နည်းပြကြီး ပိုပေါဗ့်က သူ့ရဲ့ ဆိုရှယ် မီဒီယာကနေ “ကမ္ဘာမကြေ” ဆိုတဲ့ စာသားနဲ့ အစချီပြီး မြန်မာလူငယ်အသင်းနဲ့ ပတ်သက်တဲ့ သူ့ရဲ့ ခံစားချက်တွေ၊ လာမယ့်အနာဂတ်အတွက် အစီအစဉ်တွေကို ရေးသားအသိပေးသွားခဲ့ပါတယ်။

နည်းပြကြီး ပိုပေါ့ဗ်က “ကမ်းလှမ်းခံခဲ့ရလို့ ဝမ်းသာမိပါတယ်။ မြန်မာဘောလုံးအဖွဲ့ချုပ်MFFရဲ့ ၂၀၂၁ နှစ်ကုန်အထိ နောက်ထပ်တစ်နှစ် ကျွန်တော့်ရဲ့ စာချုပ်သက်တမ်းတိုးဖို့ ကမ်းလှမ်းချက်ကို ကျွန်တော် လက်ခံလိုက်ပြီလို့ အတည်ပြုပါတယ်”

“၂၀၁၉ အတွင်း နည်းစနစ်ပိုင်း၊ နည်းဗျုဟာပိုင်း၊ ကြံခိုင်မှုပိုင်း၊ စိတ်ပိုင်းဆိုင်ရာတွေမှာ ကျွန်တော်တို့ အများကြီး တိုးတက်ခဲ့ပြီးသားပါ။ အသင်းလိုက် စုစည်းမှုအပိုင်းနဲ့ ကစားသမား တစ်ဦးချင်းမှာလည်း တိုးတက်မှုတွေ ရှိနေပါတယ်။ ၂၀၂၀ ကပ်ရောဂါကာလကတော့ ခက်ခဲစေခဲ့ပါတယ်။ ကျွန်တော်တို့ လိုချင်ခဲ့တဲ့ တိုးတက်မှုတွေကို မလုပ်နိုင်ခဲ့ပါဘူး။ ဒါပေမယ့် လာမယ့် ၂၀၂၁ အနာဂတ်နဲ့ ပတ်သက်လို့ ကျွန်တော်တို့ စိတ်လှုပ်ရှားမိပါတယ်။ လာမယ့် နှစ်မှာ ကျွန်တော်တို့ ရောက်ရှိချင်တဲ့ နေရာဟာ ဝေးကွာနေပါသေးတယ်။ ဒါကြောင့် ပိုပြီးတိုးတက်အောင် လုပ်ဆောင်ဖို့နဲ့ ပိုပြီးကြီးမားတဲ့ အောင်မြင်မှုတွေရဖို့ ကျွန်တော်တို့ ဆက်လက်ပြီး ကြိုးစားသွားမှာပါ”

“မြန်မာဘောလုံးအဖွဲ့ချုပ် MFFနဲ့ မြန်မာနေရှင်နယ်လိဂ်ကလပ်အသင်းတွေကို ကျေးဇူးတင်ပါတယ်။ ၂၀၂၁မှာ အရေးကြီးတဲ့ ပြိုင်ပွဲတွေဖြစ်တဲ့ ဆီးဂိမ်းစ်၊ AFC ခြေစစ်ပွဲ၊ AFF ချန်ပီယံရှစ်တို့အတွက် ကျွန်တော်တို့ရဲ့ ပြင်ဆင်မှုတွေကို ရာသီကြိုစခန်းဝင်လေ့ကျင့်မှုနဲ့အတူ လာမယ့် ဇန်နဝါရီ ၁၀ရက်ကနေ မတ်လ ၁၄ရက်နေ့အထိ စတင်သွားမှာပါ”

“ပျော်ရွှင်စရာခရစ္စမတ်ကာလနဲ့ ပျော်ရွှင်စရာကောင်းပြီး စီးပွားဥစ္စာဒီရေအလား တိုးတက်တဲ့ ၂၀၂၁ ဖြစ်ပါစေလို့ ကျွန်တော် ဆုတောင်းပေးပါတယ်”လို့ နည်းပြကြီး ပိုပေါ့ဗ်က သူ့ရဲ့ လူမှုကွန်ယက်စာမျက်နှာကနေ ရေးသားသွားခဲ့ပါတယ်။

ပိုပေါ့ဗ်ရဲ့လက်အောက်မှာ မြန်မာလူငယ်တိုက်စစ်မှူး အောင်ကောင်းမာန်ရဲ့ ခြေစွမ်းတွေဟာ သိသိသာသာ တိုးတက်လာခဲ့သလို မြန်မာလူငယ်တွေအတွက် အကောင်းဆုံး ပံ့ပိုးပေးနိုင်ခဲ့တဲ့ နည်းပြတစ်ဦးဖြစ်ပြီး နိုင်လိုစိတ်ပြင်းပြတဲ့ သူ့ရဲ့ ကွင်းဘေးက ညွန်ကြားမှုတွေကလည်း တမူထူးခြားပါတယ်။

နောက်ထပ် မျိုးဆက်တစ်ခုမှာလည်း နည်းပြကြီးပိုပေါဗ့် ဘယ်လို အဆင့်မီ ကစားသမားမျိုးတွေကို မွေးထုတ်ပေးမလဲဆိုတာဟာ စိတ်ဝင်စားဖို့ ကောင်းနေပြီး အသင်းလိုက် အောင်မြင်မှုတွေပါ မြန်မာအသင်းအတွက် ရယူပေးနိုင်ဦးမလားဆိုတာကလည်း ဆက်လက် စောင့်ကြည့်ရမှာပါ။

(FIFA.com)

20 Jul 2020

• Ali Ashfaq is Maldives’ all-time top international scorer with 53 goals
• Striker has scored 14 World Cup qualifying goals in an 18-year international career
• He recently returned to help the national team in their Qatar 2022 campaign

The Maldives are perhaps known globally for stunning coastal waters and luxury escapes. In the football realm, however, the island nation, with a population of less than half a million, remains an enigmatic force on the international stage.

It therefore came as a surprise when the South Asians were suddenly thrust into the global spotlight in 2013, when ace striker Ali Ashfaq was named the ‘World’s 2nd Best Top Goal Scorer’ of the year by the International Federation of Football History & Statistics (IFFHS).

With only goals in international and major continental club competitions taken into consideration, Ashfaq, with 23 such goals that year, trailed global leader Cristiano Ronaldo by just two, but was five goals clear of Zlatan Ibrahimovic and eight clear of Lionel Messi.

For the first time in history, a player from Maldives was being compared to the world’s top marksmen. The Maldives No7 managed to score 14 international goals that year, including a ten-goal haul as top-scorer at the 2013 SAFF Championship. At the club level, he struck nine times for New Radiant in the AFC Cup.

“It was indeed one of the best years of my career,” the 34-year-old told FIFA.com. “To be mentioned in the same breath as those great players was unbelievable for me. It was achieved through hard work by not only me, but also the team-mates of the national team as well as New Radiant.

“At New Radiant, we had a great squad under an amazing manager in Velizar Popov. We won everything on the domestic front that year,” continued Ashfaq, who scored an incredible 44 goals in all competitions for the club that season. “We won the league title with an unbeaten record and we reached the last-eight in the AFC Cup.”

From street football to national star

For most observers, Ashfaq is the best footballer Maldives has ever seen. It was, however, almost by accident that his love affair with the beautiful game commenced. Ashfaq was nine years old when his brother, Ashfan, played for a school team. There was a player missing one day and Ashfaq was asked to fill the void as a makeshift.

“That was how I started playing football and from there I began my football career,” he said recalling his early years. “I received my early training by playing with neighbouring boys – they are still my friends today and we hang out together occasionally. I was never an academy product.”

Despite his low-key background, Ashfaq maintained high hopes of a bright footballing future. In 2001, he was signed by local giants Valencia at the age of 16.

From there, Ashfaq began his remarkable journey as an unpolished diamond and became the country’s scoring great. He exploded with the capital-based club scoring over a century of goals across four seasons, before stints at a series of clubs, including Malaysian powerhouses PDRM FA. For nearly two decades, Ashfaq has remained amazingly consistent and prolific in front of goal.

At international level, Ashfaq has since scored 53 goals from 80 appearances in an 18-year international career, making him the country’s all-time top-scorer.

With exceptional speed, agility and technique, Ashfaq is renowned for his dribbling skills, and his penchant for taking the ball around opposition goalkeepers has become something of a trademark.

“Since I was young I have been obsessed with dribbling,” explained Ashfaq, a fervent Diego Maradona fan. “Dribbling past a goalkeeper gives me an added thrill and helps build my confidence as a forward.”

“I always wanted to surprise the rivals. I used to do everything with my left foot, but later I worked hard to improve my finishing with the right foot. I want to score using every means.”

His unique talents and outstanding form didn’t go unnoticed even by European giants with the likes of Benfica, Porto and Bursaspor all expressing interest. Ashfaq, however, rejected all these offers.

“I did receive offers from clubs across Europe and Asia. It was the Benfica offer which I seriously thought about. It was a chance which I should have taken because I could have played with some of the world’s best players had I joined them.”

Return to World Cup qualifying

Ashfaq is no stranger on Asia’s FIFA World Cup™ qualifying scene, having scored 14 times across multiple attempts to reach global football’s extravaganza. Two of these goals were scored last year on the road to Qatar 2022 with strikes in a 2-1 loss to Syria and in a 3-1 victory against Guam. 

“You know, scoring for the national team in World Cup qualifying is so special. The FIFA World Cup is the holy grail for all footballers. 

“To me, it is the ultimate dream to compete in some way relating to the World Cup, even playing in the qualifying campaign. Maldives are a small nation but we also dream big, dreams that some day we will be able to play in the World Cup.”

With two wins garnered across five outings, Maldives are trailing second-placed China PR and Philippines by just a point. Hopes of progressing as one of the best runners-up remain alive and they can secure a place among the heavyweights in Round 3 should they take maximum points from the remaining three matches.

“It is a hard group but every team, except for Guam, still have hopes. So we are not written off. If we prepare well in advance and try our best, anything can happen.” 

As one of the veterans of the current Maldives squad, however, Ashfaq dismissed the idea of winding down his career. “I still feel fit. I am working twice as hard as before to maintain my form and strengths. I want to continue to play a couple more years for both club and country. Because if I don’t play football, I don’t know what I would do.”

Back at the training pitch after a long time! 🇲🇻 pic.twitter.com/dV0KSBbyR2— Ali Ashfaq (@AliAshfaq07) July 9, 2020