“Hello” in Vietnamese is xin chao. Since June 2023, I, KOSHIDA Takeshi, have been assigned to Vietnam as the Vietnam Football Federation’s (VFF) Technical Director (TD).

I helped to advance Japanese football during my time there as manager of the Hokuriku University Football Club in Kanazawa, Ishikawa, and as a JFA tutor for the Licence Class A training courses. I came to Vietnam this year, at the age of sixty-three, as a fresh challenge for myself.

Educating Vietnamese coaches has been my main responsibility since I was appointed as TD in June, and it has kept me very busy. We finished all twelve of the VFF’s coach education courses in the six months leading up to December, earning two C and B licence courses and one each for an A and Pro licence.

I’ve taken six courses in the last six months, training with more than 100 Vietnamese trainers, and I’ve steadily learned about the Vietnamese way of thinking and culture. To begin with, there is a great deal of admiration among Vietnamese coaches for the coaching education system in Japan. It’s a very pleasant and fulfilling job to train with the Vietnamese coaches on a daily basis because the Japan National Team is currently regarded as one of the best teams in Asia and they’re eager to pick up Japanese coaching techniques. Despite the propensity to expect outcomes right now and a small resistance to set goals and execute them,

Long term, nevertheless, people in Vietnam are incredibly amiable and personable. I am appreciative of all the motivation and delight that come with coming to work every day. The development of VFF coaches and Coach Educators (CEs) is our primary goal for the coach education projects. We intend to start these instructional programmes in 2024 with the goal of developing coaches and CEs who will guide Vietnamese football in the future.