~ Le Viêt Nam, aujourd'hui. ~
The Vietnam News

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Austrian coach back to guide crisis-ridden Vietnam football

HANOI - Vietnam has appointed Austrian Alfred Riedl to coach the national football team who have been in a deep crisis since their first round exit from last year's Tiger Cup, officials said. The Vietnam Football Federation (VFF) spokesman Nguyen Lan Trung said the choice was made on Sunday. The previous coach, Edson Tavares of Brazil, resigned after Vietnam's ignominious defeat in the Tiger Cup last year.

"The choice was very difficult because Riedl's main rival, the Portuguese Henrique Calisto, is also a good coach," Trung told AFP. "Riedl will be here in under 10 days and an agreement will be signed with him later this month or early in April," he said. Trung refused to reveal the monthly salary but Vietnamese media has spoken of a sum between 12,000 and 15,000 dollars a month. Riedl, who will sign a three-year contract, has already coached the team twice before in 1998 and 2003.

Apart from Calisto, the Czech Republic's Licka Vemer was also considered. The English language daily, Vietnam News, said former China coach Bob Houghton was a last minute addition to the list. Brazilian coach Tavares had arrived in Vietnam amid much fanfare in March last year on a one-year contract. But he lasted less than 10 months and finally threw in the towel last December after watching his team failing to qualify for the Tiger Cup's knockout stages.

Vietnam had never before failed to qualify for the second round of the Tiger Cup since the tournament was launched in 1996. Since 1995, Vietnam has changed coaches nine times to try and improve the red and gold's lethargic performance. Riedl's immediate task will be to guide the squad to the finals of the 23rd Southeast Asian Games in December. The team's larger goal is also to qualify for the quarterfinals of the 2007 Asian Football Cup, which Vietnam will co-host with three other regional countries, Vietnam News noted. Last year, they finished last in their World Cup qualifying group behind South Korea , Lebanon and Maldives.

Football is a veritable religion in the country of 82 million people, which grinds to a standstill every four years to watch the World Cup, even though Vietnam has never come close to reaching the finals. Yet despite avid enthusiasm for the game, Vietnamese football is hamstrung by insufficient investment, crumbling infrastructure and a professional national championship riven by match-fixing and corruption.

The fact that many VFF officials also hold positions of responsibility with other organisations and government departments means that football invariably gets shunted down the list of priorities. But many believe it is the team's failure to keep hold of its coaches that is the most damaging problem

Agence France Presse - March 21, 2005