Coach Kim Sang Sik Returns to South Korea After Bereavement: A One-Week Silence and Vietnam's Preparation Puzzle

Hanoi in the final days of September carries the first chill of the season. At My Dinh Stadium, the rows of seats remain neatly arranged, waiting. Thousands of kilometres away, in a small house in South Korea, a man bows his head before his father's portrait.

Coach Kim Sang Sik has returned home after his father — an 84-year-old man who had long struggled with illness — passed away. The Vietnam Football Federation (VFF) confirmed the news and stated that the Korean strategist will remain in his homeland for about a week to handle funeral arrangements before returning to Vietnam to lead the national team in preparation for the 2026 ASEAN Cup.

Football is written with the feet, but it is read with the heart. And sometimes, it is the silence between two matches that is where the real story begins.

Context: a week that was not in the training plan

The 2026 ASEAN Cup — successor to the AFF Cup — kicks off on September 24 and concludes on October 5. Vietnam sits in Group A of Division 1 alongside Thailand, the Philippines and Pakistan. By conventional assessment, Vietnam are ranked above the Philippines and Pakistan, but the clash with Thailand is likely to decide who tops the group.

Kim Sang Sik was appointed to lead Vietnam in May 2026. Over more than a year, he has been recognised as a relentlessly hard-working figure, guiding both the U23 and senior national teams through regional and continental competitions. That is why his absence during the final stretch — even if only a week — carries a weight far heavier than an ordinary week away.

In Southeast Asian football, the pre-tournament preparation window is always compressed. National teams do not get long training camps; tactics, set-piece routines and video sessions on opponents are usually crammed into the final window before the ball rolls. One week inside that window is equivalent to losing sessions that carry decisive weight.

What few mention: a plan does not run itself

Vietnam's coaching staff will certainly keep training going. The assistants — men who have worked alongside Kim Sang Sik for months — have enough expertise to run fitness drills, small-group combinations and even basic tactical sessions. The VFF, by swiftly granting his leave and issuing a formal message of condolence, has shown that coordination was arranged in advance.

But maintaining a training session and transmitting a tactical idea are two different stories. The real issue is not who holds the whistle for a week, but whether the sessions in that week still carry the right emotional and intensity rhythm that the man in charge wants to stitched into his players' minds.

This is the point that data models tend to miss. Those models can calculate minutes played, passes, pressing indices, but they cannot calculate the real rhythm of a training session. Coaches do not merely set drills; they adjust the tone of each session — when to push, when to ease, when to stay silent so players can talk to one another. A week without the conductor may leave the orchestra playing the right notes, but stripped of the necessary vibrato.

From years of watching Vietnam's training camps and matches, I have noticed one rule: the sessions immediately before kick-off often determine how the team enters the first twenty minutes of a match. In a tournament that lasts barely two weeks and carries a high knockout intensity, those first twenty minutes can be life or death.

It is worth remembering that Kim Sang Sik is not merely a man who draws formations. He decides who starts, who sits on the bench, and more importantly, he is responsible for the attitude with which the team plays. In a short tournament, planting in players' minds the feeling that they control everything matters no less than any tactical drill. And that feeling can only come from the man at the top.

The contrarian view: sympathy cannot substitute for preparation

The prevailing coverage is kind to Kim Sang Sik. People speak of his dedication, his loss, and the sympathy is entirely deserved. But there is a point the public rarely looks at squarely: sympathy is an emotion, while a tournament is a scoreboard. The two cannot substitute for each other.

I do not believe this short absence will wreck Vietnam's ASEAN Cup. But if the team enters out of rhythm, looks slow in the first half of the opening match, or shows signs of a broken transition phase, then the question raised will no longer revolve around a bereavement — it will revolve around the training schedule. And at that point, the early sympathy will quickly be replaced by criticism.

Even the psychological dimension deserves a more careful look. The narrative of players playing for their coach sounds deeply moving, but emotional motivation cannot replace concrete drills. A back line that has not trained the correct way to intercept will not become more solid simply because its players love their teacher. Emotion can make legs run a few extra metres, but it cannot make a new tactical scheme click into place on its own.

One detail is worth noting about the father's age. The man was 84 and had struggled with illness for some time, which means that some degree of psychological preparation may already have existed inside Kim Sang Sik. That does not make the pain lighter, but it may help him recover faster than he would from a sudden shock. If so, the one-week period makes sense psychologically, while professionally it remains a gap that must be filled.

From Seoul to Hanoi is a curve, and every grief has a trajectory. That trajectory will decide when he returns, and in what frame of mind.

Closing: a question left behind

When he returns, roughly ten days will remain before kick-off. That is enough time to correct errors, but not enough to build from scratch. The VFF has placed its faith in the professionalism of a man going through the heaviest days of his life.

There is one question only time can answer: in that first session after his return, what will he say to his players? It could be the turning-point session of the entire tournament — not because of the drills, but because of the tone.