Father Passes Away, Kim Sang Sik Returns to South Korea as Vietnam Prepares for ASEAN Cup 2026

When I learned that the father of coach Kim Sang Sik had passed away, the first thing that came to mind was not the ASEAN Cup 2026, but a night in Kaliningrad in the summer of 2026. That evening, after Serbia lost to Switzerland, an agent sitting with me at the hotel spoke about having just called his family in Zagreb because he was worried about his mother's health. "In football, we prepare for everything," he said. "But there is one thing you can never prepare for: the death of a loved one."

There are days in sports journalism when the big story does not come from the stadium but from a short press release. Late the night before last, Vietnam time, the Vietnam Football Federation (VFF) issued an official statement: the father of the Vietnam national team head coach had passed away at the age of 84 after a period of illness. The South Korean manager will temporarily leave Vietnam to return home for mourning, expected to last about a week, before coming back to continue leading the national team at the ASEAN Cup 2026.

One line in the VFF statement made me pause and read it twice: "We hope coach Kim Sang Sik and his family can soon overcome this immense loss." There was no "while ensuring preparation progress," no "the team continues training normally under the coaching staff." There was only a condolence — a condolence in the truest sense.

In fourteen years of covering this industry, I have learned that how an organization responds to a personal crisis involving its employee says more about that organization than any annual report. I have seen federations push coaches onto the pitch while their wives lay in hospital beds, and I have seen clubs allow players a full month off when their mothers passed away. Results on the pitch do not always reflect that difference, but internal culture does. And internal culture, over time, decides long-term success.

Context: A week that appears in no coaching manual

The ASEAN Cup 2026 — formerly the AFF Cup — kicks off on September 24 and ends on October 5. It is the most important tournament in Southeast Asian football at the national team level within the two-year cycle. For Vietnam, the picture is clear: the team sits in Group A alongside Thailand, the Philippines, and Pakistan, playing in a single round-robin format. Advancing from the group stage is the minimum target, and a place in the semi-finals is what fans take for granted.

Placed in the regional context, Vietnam occupies the second tier of Southeast Asia, behind Thailand in financial capacity and squad depth, but ahead of the Philippines and Pakistan in organizational stability. Thailand remains the main rival in the group, and the match against Thailand will in all likelihood decide first place. The Philippines, despite being in the middle of a national team restructuring, cannot be taken lightly on home soil. Pakistan is the weaker opponent, but in Southeast Asian football, matches of this kind sometimes become traps if the stronger side loses focus.

Since his appointment in May 2026, Kim Sang Sik has built a relatively solid position. He leads both the U23 and the senior national team, achieving consistent results in regional and continental competitions. His way of building a team is not flashy or ostentatious, but steady — the type of coach that federation leaders often call "safe in media terms." In an environment where every defeat can become a social media trend, Kim's stability is an asset.

But that stability has just encountered a variable no coach can control: family. According to information I have gathered from the VFF side and close sources, Vietnam's preparation plan for the ASEAN Cup 2026 includes a concentrated training and tactical development phase through August and September. In Southeast Asian football, national teams typically have only short windows to assemble squads and implement ideas. Every training week in this period is worth far more than a week in the middle of a club season.

Kim Sang Sik's father passed away at 84, after a period of illness. From a human perspective, this is a loss that nothing can compensate for. But from an operational perspective, a head coach having to leave the team for a week on the eve of an important tournament is a problem every federation has to face at least once in its cycle. The question is not whether to let him go home — the answer is obviously yes, he must. The real question is: how will the team operate during that period, and who will take responsibility for the training sessions without him?

Analysis: The gap and how to fill it

In professional football, when a head coach is absent for personal reasons, the standard procedure is to hand over control to the number one assistant, or to establish a temporary coaching committee. The VFF has not publicly disclosed this detail in its statement, and that may be intentional. But looking at precedents, there are several likely scenarios.

Scenario one: the head coach maintains remote contact. This is the most common approach in modern football, especially when technology allows him to monitor training via video and hold online calls with the coaching staff daily. Kim Sang Sik could easily review training clips and send corrections, even without being physically present on the pitch.

Scenario two: the assistant is given decision-making authority over professional content for a short period. This depends on the level of trust between the head coach and his assistant team. If Kim has built a trusted staff over more than two years in Vietnam, the risk will be much lower.

Scenario three: some federations simply reduce training intensity during this period, maintaining only fitness and drills that do not require complex tactics. This is the safest but least effective option, because preparation time is effectively frozen — something no coach desires.

What I do not yet have the data to determine is which scenario the VFF has chosen. But looking at how this federation has handled the situation, some positive signals are visible. The VFF President — according to information I have recorded — personally encouraged Kim Sang Sik to return home for the funeral, rather than raising concerns about the preparation schedule. That move, in a context where Asian football still has no shortage of cases where leaders put results above the human element, is a noteworthy sign.

There is one more point I want to emphasize. Kim Sang Sik himself is known as a hard worker. In two years leading the Vietnam national team, he has rarely had a long break. This is not a small detail. If a coach accustomed to such intensity is forced to step away at exactly an important stage, it is not just a scheduling matter. It is also a psychological matter — for both him and the team.

From the players' perspective, Kim's students may react in two directions. The first is to increase effort, as a way of "playing for the coach." This response is widely recognized in sports psychology and can produce positive short-term effects. The second is anxiety about tactical progress, particularly among older players or newcomers to the national team. If the training sessions during that week veer off plan, seeds of doubt could appear. Of course, these are forward-looking analyses; nothing in the VFF statement suggests internal instability.

In my experience covering international matches, there is a small rule I always keep in mind: teams that survive a disrupted preparation phase tend to react in one of two ways. One is to play tighter, with less risk, as if trying to compensate for instability through discipline. The other is to play more explosively, as if trying to prove that the absence changes nothing. Vietnam under Kim Sang Sik tends toward the first — controlled, steady, low-risk. If he is absent for a week and the team maintains that structure, it will be a sign that the system has become sufficiently solid.

Contrarian Point: Perhaps a week away may help Kim return stronger

This may be a perspective that irritates more than a few people. But I believe it needs to be said.

In sports psychology, two types of grief are distinguished: anticipated grief and sudden grief. When a loved one suffers a long illness and is advanced in age, the survivor typically goes through a process of "grief beforehand" — preparing mentally over months, even years. This does not make the pain lighter, but it can shorten the shock phase compared to a sudden death.

Kim Sang Sik's father passed away at 84 after a period of illness. No one can say for certain what Kim's mental state is right now. But there is one possibility: a week in South Korea, among family, within the traditional rites of Korean culture, may be exactly what is needed for Kim to restore balance before returning to the brutal grind of the tournament. If he had to keep working without that pause, the psychological consequences could be far more serious.

Seen this way, the VFF allowing Kim to go home is not "losing a week of preparation" but "investing in long-term stability." That is a different calculation from football's usual arithmetic, but it may be the right one.

There is one detail about how sports organizations handle such situations that I want to recall from my personal notebook. I once followed a case in the Premier League — a coach lost his father mid-season, took three days for the funeral, and returned immediately for the next match. That match ended in a heavy defeat. It was three weeks before the team recovered its form. Perhaps if that coach had been given enough time, things would have been different.

No one can prove causality in stories like these. But professional football has accumulated enough evidence to show that the human element cannot be separated from the professional one. A week for family may cost more than a week of tactical training, but that price is sometimes worth paying.

Contrarian Point, Part Two: Will sympathy protect Kim if results fall short?

This is a difficult question. In football, sympathy has a short shelf life. Fans can share a coach's grief for a week, but if Vietnam is eliminated from the ASEAN Cup 2026 group stage, the story will be told differently. At that point, a week of absence may be revisited as a "preparation gap" rather than "time needed for family."

I do not say this to sow doubt. I say it to show that every decision in football has two sides: the human side and the results side. The human side has been handled correctly. The results side remains untouched, waiting in Thailand, the Philippines, Pakistan, and beyond, in the semi-finals.

This is also why I am always skeptical of romanticized football narratives. When a small team beats a big one, the media calls it a "miracle." When a coach overcomes personal hardship to win, people call it "inspiration." Both storytelling styles serve ticket sales and emotional engagement. But they obscure reality: football is run by measurable factors — budgets, contracts, squad structure, player fitness. The human element matters, but it cannot replace those factors.

Takeaway: What matters is not the news, but how the team walks into the first match

When a head coach is absent, people usually ask: "How will the team play?" But the more important question may be: "With what mindset will the team walk into the first match?"

A team that feels the support of its organization and the presence of its head coach differs from a team that feels uncertainty. That is something no data analysis table can measure precisely. But anyone who has been in a dressing room knows: it exists, and it carries weight.

I will follow the ASEAN Cup 2026 with a different eye. Not to find fault or to praise, but to see whether Vietnamese football can demonstrate a model of leadership that values the human being while still competing at the highest level. If the answer is yes, that will be a story worth writing far more than any transfer I have ever covered.

And sometimes, the very weeks when someone is absent from the pitch are the weeks that leave the deepest marks.