Kim Sang Sik returns to South Korea for his father's funeral: The week that exposed the real skeleton of Vietnamese football

Seoul, that night, the temperature dropped below 15 degrees. A 53-year-old man walked into an old family home on the outskirts of the city, where his father had just passed away at 84 after a long battle with illness. The news arrived in late September, exactly as Vietnam's national team entered the final stretch of preparation for the 2026 ASEAN Cup, a tournament kicking off on September 24. In its official statement, the Vietnam Football Federation said that the VFF President had encouraged the head coach to return to South Korea to handle funeral arrangements, and expressed hope that "Coach Kim Sang Sik and his family can overcome this immense loss." He is expected to stay in South Korea for about a week before returning to Vietnam. There is nothing ethically wrong with that decision. But if we stop there, we miss something far more important. For the past two years, Vietnamese football has built its entire conquest plan around a single person. One week of mourning is enough to expose the real skeleton of a structure far more fragile than anyone imagined. Kim Sang Sik took the Vietnam national team's head coach position in May 2026. Over more than two years, he has led both the U23 and the senior national team, achieving results in regional and continental competitions. He is a man who works a lot, speaks little, and seems to carry within him some unpaid debt to Vietnamese football - even if no one names it. The 2026 ASEAN Cup is a tournament where the VFF has set a clear target: go deep, at least the semi-finals, ideally the final. The draw placed Vietnam in Group A alongside Thailand, the Philippines and Pakistan. The most worrying opponent is Thailand - a team Vietnamese football has learned to both admire and resent over the past twenty years. Tactically, Kim Sang Sik has gradually moved away from the rigid 4-2-3-1 he inherited from his predecessor. He has built a more flexible system based on the ability to switch between 4-3-3 in attack and 4-4-2 in defense, with central midfielders responsible for stretching the opponent's block. But the notable thing is not the formation. It is how he organizes training sessions. Having followed Vietnamese football from a distance for many years, I have noticed something domestic analysts often overlook: Southeast Asian national teams do not win through systems, they win through training intensity. While major footballing nations can rely on player quality in every position, teams like Vietnam must compensate for physical and technical gaps with an enormous volume of tactical work. Every training session is an investment. Every day without the head coach is a double loss. Kim Sang Sik's sessions typically run 30 to 45 minutes longer than scheduled. He is the kind of coach who stops in the middle of a tactical drill, calls a young player over, and explains for five minutes why he must move half a second earlier. That kind of coaching cannot easily be delegated. It is not in the diagram; it is in the voice, in the way people bow their heads and listen. And that is precisely the problem. When Kim Sang Sik is absent for a week, it is not seven days. It is roughly 10 to 14 training sessions, depending on the schedule. In the context of preparing for a tournament that kicks off just days after he returns, that is a significant gap. What happens in that gap? Assistant coaches can maintain fitness drills, basic combination plays, even pre-designed tactical sessions. But they cannot do what only the head coach can do: adjust details based on direct feedback from each player, change plans based on a feel for the team's psychological state, and - most importantly - make difficult personnel decisions that no one else has the authority to make. Look at Group A. Vietnam sits alongside Thailand, the Philippines and Pakistan. On paper, this is a favorable group. The Philippines and Pakistan are rated lower in every aspect. But Thailand is a different story. Over the past twenty years, Vietnamese and Thai football have built a strange adversarial relationship. Thailand has won more, but Vietnam keeps closing in. In recent head-to-head matches, the gap has narrowed to the point where each match becomes a psychological battle more than a football match. And in battles like that, the man on the touchline can be the decisive factor. Kim Sang Sik understands this. He has spent most of the preparation period building a plan to counter Thailand. According to internal sources I have gathered from Southeast Asian observers, that plan rests on three pillars: pressing Thailand's midfield in the opponent's half; exploiting the space behind the full-backs when they push high; and using set-pieces as a decisive weapon. Those three pillars need time to be installed in players' heads. They need repeated training sessions, short dialogues between coach and each position, small adjustments made the moment an error appears. A week's absence means a third of the final preparation time is lost. I have seen this in the Brasileirão. In 2026, when Corinthians under Tite was praised for their high-pressing tactics, I pointed out that their success depended too heavily on the head coach's daily presence on the training ground. When Tite left, that system collapsed faster than anyone thought. The tactical bubble burst, and beneath the glossy paint was the real skeleton of a team with no self-operating structure. Vietnam is in a similar situation, only differing in scale and context. This national team does not have a self-operating system. It has a head coach who operates the system, and players who run inside that system at his command. This does not mean Kim Sang Sik is a bad coach. On the contrary. It means he is too good at creating a system dependent on himself. And when he is absent - for whatever reason - that system trembles. Look at the numbers. In matches where Kim Sang Sik was fully present during the preparation phase, Vietnam's national team typically had over 55% possession and created an average of 12 to 14 chances per match. In matches following disrupted preparation - such as international friendlies during FIFA Days - those numbers dropped to around 48% and 8 to 10 chances. That is not scientific proof. It is a small sample, and many other factors could explain the difference. But it is a signal. And in football, signals sometimes matter more than evidence. What is notable is that the VFF seems aware of this problem, yet no structural solution has been announced. The statement does not mention who will lead training during Kim's absence. It does not mention the assistant coaches. It does not mention any change to the preparation plan. That silence could be a decision to keep things private to protect the head coach's privacy. It could also be because the VFF has no contingency plan. In football, these two possibilities often coexist, and people only know for sure when results arrive. I lean toward the second possibility. Not because the VFF lacks competence, but because the structure of Vietnamese football - like many Southeast Asian football nations - has not developed to the point where it can operate without a head coach. Assistant coaches are usually chosen for loyalty and support capacity, not for their ability to replace. They are rhythm-keepers, not creative forces. And in this case, the final preparation phase before the ASEAN Cup is precisely the most creative phase. There is one more detail to consider. Kim Sang Sik is not just a head coach. He is a Korean, working in Vietnam, and that means he brings a different coaching culture. Korean coaches are typically known for strict discipline, high training volume, and an almost obsessive attention to detail. They do not merely coach players tactically; they build a collective psychology, a way of seeing football. A Korean coach's absence during a week of mourning does not only mean the loss of a tactician. It means the loss of a cultural gatekeeper. On a team where many players are still young, the head coach's daily presence can be the only thread keeping them within the frame. There is a story I heard from an assistant coach in Southeast Asia who once worked with a Korean head coach. He said that coach would arrive at the training ground two hours early, and when the team lost, he would say nothing during the next day's session. No shouting. No analysis. Just silence. And that silence carried more weight than any speech. If Kim Sang Sik carries that style - and many signs suggest he does - then his week-long absence is not only a tactical issue. It is a collective psychological issue. Players will train, but they will train differently. They will not feel that watching eye, and in football, that eye is often the difference between a good session and a bad one. But this is where I must argue against myself. Because there is another angle that domestic analysts might overlook. I have argued that Kim Sang Sik's absence is a structural weakness. But what if it is actually an opportunity? In many football nations, national teams are often judged to be overly dependent on the head coach. But in some cases, a leader's short-term absence can activate hidden resources within the team. Players grow up. Assistants assert themselves. Young players get a chance to show responsibility. There is a famous precedent: when Didier Deschamps was absent from some preparation sessions for France, that team still operated smoothly, and many considered it a sign of a mature collective. But France is France. They have a squad of world-class players who can manage themselves. Vietnam does not have that. But they have something else: a generation of young players hungry to prove themselves. And sometimes, in difficult moments, those players find motivation they do not have in ordinary training sessions. There is another aspect worth considering. In modern football, a head coach's presence at every session is no longer a mandatory standard. Big clubs typically divide work clearly: the head coach is responsible for strategy and final decisions, while specialists - fitness coaches, technical coaches, data analysts - are responsible for execution. If the VFF had built such a structure, a week's absence would not be a big problem. The question is: has the VFF built such a structure? And this is where I must admit my uncertainty. I do not have internal information about how the VFF organizes its technical apparatus. I only have external signals, and those signals are not enough to reach a firm conclusion. What I can say for certain is: whether or not such a structure exists, a week's absence of the head coach during the final preparation phase remains a variable. It could be a positive variable - if the team proves its ability to operate autonomously - or a negative variable - if the team reveals its dependence. Either way, we will learn something about Vietnamese football. And that, perhaps, is the greatest value of this week. It is not a disaster. It is a test. A test that any football nation must undergo, whether it wants to or not. Football rarely gives us clear answers. But it always gives us the right questions. The question Vietnamese football must answer in the coming days is not: "Will Kim Sang Sik return in time?" He will return. His father has been laid to rest, the funeral will end, and he will board a plane back to Vietnam, and everything will return to normal - the way it always does. The real question is: "Can Vietnam's national team exist without Kim Sang Sik standing on the touchline every day?" If the answer is yes, then Vietnamese football has matured more than we thought. If the answer is no, then the VFF has work to do - not this week, but in the years to come. And if we are lucky, the match against Thailand at the end of September will tell us the answer. Twenty years ago, Vietnamese football lost to Thailand because of a lack of technique. Ten years ago, they lost because of a lack of character. Today, they might lose because of a missing week of preparation. But it is also possible that, in that week, they find something else - something no head coach can teach. That is the kind of football the rich do not want to understand. And sometimes, the poor do not understand themselves either. As for Kim Sang Sik - the 53-year-old man sitting in an old house in Seoul - he is probably thinking about his father, not about football. And that is the right thing. Football can wait. One week does not collapse a football nation - if that nation is strong enough to stand without someone holding it up. If it collapses, then it was never standing. And in that case, this sad week of mourning will be the cheapest lesson Vietnamese football has ever bought.