Credit goes to national team coach Henrique Calisto for discovering and turning unknown Le Phuoc Tu into an ideal foil for national team’s “iron man,” central fullback Nhu Thanh.

Central Quang Nam Province’s locals are now proud of their homegrown hero. When Tu arrived home after Vietnam’s victory, people in the neighborhood came to celebrate his success with the national team.

Tu loved football more than anything else, from a very young age.

“In those days, a piece of land, an area with some grass by National Highway 14B and later the Zone 4 football field in Ai Nghia Town (Quang Nam Province’s Dai Loc District) or any space large enough for playing football had my footprint,” Tu says.

“Sometimes, I was late for school or even cut classes. Once, my father saw me playing football instead of being in class. He chased me with a stick. I was afraid of being beaten, so I ran around the field. After a while, my father got tired and gave up; but I was too frightened to go home at that time. I didn’t go home until evening.”

After playing for his school team, Tu was chosen to play for the district and then the provincial team.

“Da Nang City coaching staff wanted me to come and play in their junior team but my parents said no. I regret it, but I couldn’t go against my parents’ wishes,” Tu says.

Boot camp

Despite Tu’s obvious love for football, Le Phuoc Ba harbored no hopes for his son in the sport. He wanted Tu to join the army and be trained to become a good man through its strict discipline.

But it was his father’s plans for him that actually opened the door for Tu to join the Military Zone 5 junior team when he was selected.

He was 18 years old then. Tu says: “I understood it was hard to learn to become a good player although it was not as severe as the training in the army. I accepted everything providing I could have a chance to play the game I loved.”

Two years after he began playing for the Military Zone 5 junior team, Tu was amazed to be called up to play for The Cong team, where the best players in the army are selected to play.

The Cong is not simply a football team of the army. It is also a significant part of Vietnamese football, providing superb players for the national team. The national team had to cancel training once because eight players from The Cong hadn’t turned up.

But The Cong has also been a place that filtered out players who did not play well.

Tu remembers that he “was training with many skillful players while I was very clumsy.”

However, hard training improved Tu’s skills considerably. In 2007, he was paired with Tuan “Hoa Binh” to form a reliable defense for The Cong. In 2008, Tu was placed alongside Nhu Thanh to form the first line of defense, in front of custodian Duong Hong Son.

The bad times

Tu is well aware that he is lucky to be where he is now, because “I have been unlucky sometimes.”

In a friendly match against Indonesia before the 2008 AFF Suzuki Cup, Tu fouled a rival player in the penalty area. In another friendly against China’s Olympic team, Tu scored an own goal.

In the first leg of the 2008 AFF Suzuki Cup semifinals, Tu sent the ball into the home team’s net. However, the referee ruled it was a foul.

Tu’s misfortunes elicited complaints in the media about Calisto’s use of his players. Yet Calisto had his own ideas.

He kept Tu on the bench in the 2008 AFF Cup group stage; and then used him in the semifinals against Singapore. It was Tu who successfully kept close to Agu Casmir of the Lions to prevent the Nigerian Singaporean striker from launching any effective attack on Vietnam.

Perhaps the 24-year-old defender’s unlucky moments were gone by then.

In late 2004, Tu had come to the capital on a chilly day with a lot of concern and uncertainty about his future. When he gets back to Hanoi this time to play for The Cong, he will begin a new stage in his life of striving for new heights.

For the army team, Tu is one who has broken through after a string of failures among players selected from military zones. Hopefully, this will motivate others and provide the national team with resilient players in Tu’s mould.

Reported by Thanh Luong