Pressing Is Not a Tactic, It's a Love Letter to the Ball: The Fitness Puzzle of Vietnamese Football Under Coach Kim Sang-sik

Kuala Lumpur, AFF Cup 2026 final night. Minute 88, the score is 2-1 in Thailand's favor. Nguyen Xuan Son receives the ball in his own half, but instead of the familiar short pass, he turns, looks up, and delivers a long cross-field pass to Tien Linh. Tien Linh's first touch is not perfect, but it's enough for him to win the sprint duel against the Thai center-back. In that moment, I realize something has changed forever in Vietnam's playing style. I have followed Vietnamese football since my days as a track and field reporter, when the concept of 'high pressing' was still foreign to Southeast Asian teams. But that night, before my eyes, Vietnam played the kind of football that even Asia's top teams would have to respect. They pressed from the opponent's half, with the team's compactness reduced to about 25 meters — a figure I recorded at World Cup 2026 when Croatia's Modric pressed high with an average of 9.5 km per player per match. But the story doesn't stop at tactics. It's a story about fitness, about adaptation, and about a bigger question: Does Vietnamese football have enough 'raw material' to sustain the modern pressing game that Coach Kim Sang-sik is building? Look at the data. At AFF Cup 2026, Vietnam averaged 112.3 km per match — 4.2 km higher than the tournament average. But the more impressive number lies in successful presses: 68 per match, meaning every 1.3 minutes, a Vietnamese player closed down and pressured the opponent in possession. For comparison, at World Cup 2026, Japan — a team famous for high pressing — averaged only 61 presses per match. But here's the crux: pressing is not a tactic, it's a love letter to the ball. And every love letter requires energy. Vietnamese players ran a total of 1,124 km throughout the tournament, but the concerning issue is the performance drop in the second half. In the final 15 minutes, the team's running distance dropped by an average of 18.7% compared to the first 15 minutes. Thailand's figure was only 12.3%. I remember my days following Nguyen Thi Huyen at SEA Games 2026. She ran the 400m hurdles in 56.14 seconds, but what impressed me wasn't the number on the scoreboard, but how she maintained steady breathing in the final 200 meters. That was the result of thousands of hours of lactate threshold training — something Vietnamese footballers systematically lack. There are races not measured by the clock, but by the silence between two breaths. In modern football, that silence is the final 15 minutes — where high pressing becomes a matter of survival. Coach Kim Sang-sik understands this. He was a defender for the Korean national team, where fitness training intensity is considered the foundation of all tactics. But he's working with players who have a different fitness base. Look at V.League 2026-2026. Vietnamese clubs average only 98.7 km per match — 13.6 km less than the national team. This creates a huge gap between the club environment and national team demands. When players return to the national team, they must adapt to much higher intensity than what they're used to week in, week out. This is the tactical blind spot few talk about: high pressing is not just a tactical issue, it's an ecosystem issue. If V.League doesn't raise its intensity, Vietnam will forever depend on short training camps to 'cram' fitness into players — an unsustainable method that easily leads to injuries. I once witnessed Karsten Warholm break the 400m hurdles record at Tokyo 2026 with 45.94 seconds. What made him different wasn't his hurdle technique, but his ability to maintain speed in the final 100 meters — where most athletes drop 8-10%. Warholm only dropped 4.2%. That difference came from thousands of hours of anaerobic threshold training, not innate talent. Vietnamese football is at a similar crossroads. Coach Kim Sang-sik has built a modern tactical system, but that system stands on a fitness foundation that doesn't yet match. The question isn't 'should we press high or not', but 'how do we sustain high pressing for 90 minutes without performance dropping'. In silence, an athlete's heart beats louder than any crowd. And in the final 15 minutes, when My Dinh Stadium shakes with chants of 'Vietnam! Vietnam!', I can hear the labored breathing of players on the pitch. That's the line between victory and defeat, between a team pressing out of belief and a team pressing out of fear. The solution isn't changing tactics, but changing how we view fitness. V.League clubs need to invest in fitness rooms, nutritionists, GPS tracking technology. The national team needs a long-term fitness development program, not just short camps before tournaments. I look back at my journey — from a young track and field reporter at SEA Games 2026, to covering World Cup 2026, to witnessing the rise of Vietnamese football. At every step, I realize that sport never lies. Stopwatches don't lie. And neither does running distance. Vietnamese football is running faster than ever. But the biggest question isn't how fast they run, but how long they can sustain that speed. That's a question only time and proper investment can answer. And when the answer comes, I believe it will come from 5 AM training sessions, from sweat dripping on the grass, from stories no one sees on television. Because there are races not measured by the clock, but by the silence between two breaths. And Vietnamese football is learning to listen to its own breathing.