Vietnam football coach resigns after loss to Burma
HANOI - The longtime coach of Vietnam's national Under-23 football team, Alfred Riedl, resigned Wednesday after a loss to lowly Burma ended the team's hopes of winning a silver medal in the Southeast Asian Games, Vietnamese media reported Thursday.
The Austrian Riedl said his time in Vietnam had seen "great victories and bitter defeats," Vietnam's Football newspaper reported.
Riedl has resigned twice before since taking the reins of the Vietnamese club in 1998. He coached the team to three silver medals at earlier SEA Games, and into the quarterfinals of this year's Asia Cup.
Vietnam Football Federation chairman Nguyen Trong Hy announced that assistant coach Mai Duc Chuong would take over as temporary coach.
"I'm surprised and sad that Riedl leaves in this situation," Chuong said in an interview. "The goal of winning a bronze medal, to compensate for our losses, must be fulfilled."
Vietnam has a chance to salvage the bronze with a win over Singapore in its final match Friday.
Riedl, who played striker with Austria Vienna, FC Metz and Standard Liege, is widely popular in Vietnam. When he needed a kidney transplant early this year, scores of fans volunteered as donors.
But the Austrian appeared to have worn out his welcome due to his team's long failure to satisfy Vietnamese fans' possibly unrealistic expectations of an international championship.
"Resigning was the right thing for Riedl to do," said football fan Le Cong Hoa, citing the team's lackluster performance at the SEA Games. "The players' abilities may be poor, but the coach should be held responsible for that."
"I think the Vietnam Football Federation is being too kind by allowing him to resign," agreed fellow fan Tran Van Viet. "He should have been fired. But VFF is also to blame. VFF is supposed to have a development strategy for the country's football, but this organization hasn't done anything."
Deutsche Presse Agentur - December 13, 2007.
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