In a press conference before the first game of the U23 AFC Championship, coach Park mentioned some of the difficulties he is facing in coaching the Vietnam U23 team.
"I’m facing some challenges in this qualifier. The current U23 squad is better physically, but less skilled and experienced than the U23 squad of 2018.
"The team that won silver in that tournament also had more play time in V. League 1 than the current one, which has affected their form," Park said.
He said that although there were some national team players in the squad, he was worried that other young players in the team may have a hard time catching up with them.
"We have a few national team players in our squad, but the level gap between them and the others is quite large and I am worried, because they will also have to compete in the SEA Games this year," he said, refering to the Southeast Asian tournament in November.
Lack of preparation time and discontinuation in training were other difficulties that Park spoke of.
"The preparation time for this tournament is not enough. And I was also not happy about some players in the team having to go back in the middle of the training to play for their club at the AFC Cup. We cannot have the best preparation with that kind of training. I will talk to the federation about this issue in the future," Park said.
The South Korean coach did not forget to repeat his request for five weeks to prepare for the SEA Games.
In the qualifiers of U23 AFC, Vietnam is placed in group K with Brunei, Indonesia and Thailand.
Vietnam is the host of group K games and all the matches will be played at the My Dinh National Stadium in Hanoi. Vietnam will face Brunei first on March 22, Indonesia on March 24 and Thailand two days later. All the games start at 8 p.m. Hanoi time.
In the 2018 edition of U23 AFC Championship, Vietnam finished as runner-up after losing 1-2 to Uzbekistan in the final.