I don't exactly keep up with sports least of all football / soccer but the other night I was wandering around and noticed that there were large gatherings of Vietnamese people making much more noise than normal and all staring at screens that in some situations were set up in places that don't normally have screens.
As it turns out, Vietnam was playing in the Asian Cup with the under 23 year olds and I guess Vietnam has been doing rather well in this tournament.
This country is just as "mental" as any other (well, other than USA) about football and they have a real sense of community when their country's team is doing well, which I can only presume isn't very often.
I had no idea that the cup was even going on and while a lot of my friends are very much into English football, most of them didn't realize that this cup was going on either. Apparently Vietnam was expected to do well, but not to make it to the semi-final.
I didn't take a picture but basically every single bar and restaurant had the commentary turned up to 11 because the Vietnamese people like it loud, and it was kind of funny because some of the people had a satellite feed and others had a cable feed or local feed I guess, so some of the places had their broadcast be a few seconds faster than others. While I was having a beer I would hear cheering from around the corner and it kind of ruined the vibe where I was at because the people already knew something big was coming up.
Unfortunately for all the people watching it didn't turn out the way that they had hoped and China beat them pretty badly 3-0. While I do not know a huge amount about the sport I do know that Japan and Korea really dislike one another because of WW2 reasons and because of this their games can get quite heated. I wish I had known about that game because no offense Vietnamese people, but I don't share your enthusiasm for the national team.
Something strange that sounds a bit illegal popped up in the news about a very wealthy person in Vietnam that is offering additional money to the Vietnamese team if they manage to defeat South Korea in the 3rd place match. The money isn't really that big when you consider how wealthy the man is, but he offered 3 billion VND to the members of the team, to split, if they win the match.
I think he could have offered them 3 billion dollars and it wouldn't be enough motivation for them to emerge victorious in that match. It is my understanding that Japan and Korea are much better than any of the other teams in this tournament as they are quite wealthy countries that put a lot of money into developing talent and regularly qualify for the real World Cup. I looked it up and found out that Vietnam has NEVER qualified for the World Cup whereas even though I don't pay attention to the sport, or really any sport for that matter, I do recall that Japan and South Korea qualify for it basically every time it happens.
I was unaware that China was good at football and it wouldn't surprise me if they in fact are not, but just got the easy side of this bracket.
If you know anything about history you probably understand that there is a really good reason for China to hold bad blood against Japan from the 1940's as well so I wonder if they have some sort of increased security for this match as well. It was a long time ago but I remember reading a list about the most dangerous sport matchups as far as the fans are concerned and Korean and Japan are intentionally not put in situations where they will face one another specifically for that reason.
But a lot of that probably has to do with the fact that both these nations are regularly good at soccer. China, I don't think is very really all that good at it which is surprising seeing as how they have 2 billion people living there. It seems like they would be the best at everything but instead they are just the best at things that not many people care about like archery and table tennis....
The 3rd place match is tonight at I think 10pm so I would imagine that those people will all be out in force again to cheer on the reds. Unfortunately for them I think it is going to be another night of sadness.