Troussier was born on March 21, 1955, in Paris, France. During his coaching career, he has led the national teams of Ivory Coast, Nigeria, Qatar and Morocco, but was most successful when guiding South Africa to compete in the 1998 World Cup. Four years later, he strongly impressed by leading Japan through to the World Cup knockout stage for the first time in history.
In June 2018, Troussier inked a contract to work as the technical director of the PVF youth football training centre in Vietnam’s Hung Yen Province.
Addressing the press conference on Tuesday, the 64-year-old tactician expressed his great honour to be invited to lead Vietnam U19s towards the goal of securing a berth in the 2020 AFC U19 Championship finals.
He said he accepted immediately when he received the proposal from the VFF. The French strategist also expressed his hope that Vietnam U19s would harvest such success as has been achieved by Vietnam’s U22, U23 and national teams over recent times.
VFF General Secretary Le Hoai Anh, VFF Permanent Vice President Tran Quoc Tuan and head coach of Vietnam U19s Philippe Troussier (from left to right) at the press conference. (Photo: VFF)
According to VFF General Secretary Le Hoai Anh, Troussier has been invited to become the head coach of Vietnam U19s based on the cooperation between the VFF and the Promotion Fund of Vietnamese Football Talents (PVF), where he is serving as the technical director.
The federation hopes that under the instruction of coach Troussier, Vietnam U19s will realise the goal of making it through to the finals of the 2020 AFC U19 Championship, Anh stated.
At the upcoming qualifiers, Vietnam will host the fixtures of Group J, which also gathers Mongolia, Guam and Japan. According to the regulations, the 11 group winners and the five best second-placed teams will qualify for the finals, to be hosted in Japan next year.
Head coach Philippe Troussier and his troops will kick-start their preparations for the qualification mission from September 13. During their training process, Vietnam U19s will participate in an international tournament in Thailand from October 10 to 12, with the presence of hosts Thailand and two other invitees, Uzbekistan and the Republic of Korea.
