HCM City teams vow to stop the rot

Southern pride: Vo Phi Thuong of Navibank Sai Gon challenges for the ball with a member of Khatoco Khanh Hoa during a match at the HCM City's Football Federation tournament. — VNA/VNS Photo Quang Nhut

HCM CITY — HCM City football has shown intentions of putting a stop to its shameful results over the last two years at local football competitions as HCM City and Navibank Sai Gon football clubs have revamped their teams for the new season.

During the last weekend of the 2009 V-League season, the city football witnessed the relegation of two clubs.

Sai Gon United was relegated to the Second Division despite a 2-0 win over Hoa Phat Ha Noi in the last match, and one day later, HCM City also suffered the same fate with a 3-2 defeat by Binh Duong.

There was no escaping the fact that city football had no representative in the 2010 V-League until Navibank Bank surprisingly bought the Military Zone 4 football club. They renamed it Navibank Sai Gon and chose Thong Nhat Stadium as its home ground.

However, Navibank Sai Gon was struggling at the bottom of the table throughout the season.

The club was relegated, but the fact that there were six fewer clubs in the First Division operating as a business handed Navibank a play-off with Quang Ninh. They escaped from relegation with a 2-0 win.

After being demoted to the First Division, HCM City continued its poor performance and had a disappointing season and only until the last round did the club escape from demotion.

Change for better

But the upcoming 2011 V-League season, the so-called professional football season, could be a different story as city-based clubs have made moves to build their teams that not only have survived the relegation but also have enough ability to move into the top half of the ranking.

Navibank splashed out a considerable amount of money on players, bringing in qualified strikers Nguyen Quang Hai from Khanh Hoa, Brazilian-Vietnamese striker Huynh Kesley Alves from Binh Duong and midfielder Luong Van Duoc Em from Dong Thap.

While Hai is the most prolific local striker last season with 13 goals, veteran Huynh Kesley has stamped his authority onto the V-League with his vast experience. Duoc Em was considered a promising young player last season.

"With new players joining the team and good preparation, we will try to finish the 2011 V-League at least in the middle of the table. We hope that the worries over the relegation will not be repeated," said Mai Duc Chung, head coach of Navibank Sai Gon.

By recruiting a foreign coach and bringing in some new faces, HCM City, the successor of the famous Sai Gon Port, has also made its intentions clear that they do not want to be a contender for the relegation in the next nine months.

The club recently signed a contract with Croatian coach Vjeran Simunic and hired Singaporean coach Robert Lim as a technical consultant. They have also recruited foreign players Lima and Cokolic from fellow club TDC Binh Duong.

Coach Simunic said that his team was ready for the new season. He believes the club will not have to face a battle to avoid relegation, as they did last season. — VNS

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Viet Nam invite Arsenal for friendly

Viet Nam has invited English Premier League club Arsenal to play a friendly during their Asian tour next year, a source from the British sports marketing firm Strata said yesterday.

As scheduled, the Gunners will play three friendly matches in China and Viet Nam next summer.

The source also said it plans to seek a US$2 million sponsorship deal to pay for the Arsenal friendly.

In 2007, Arsenal established a football academy – the Arsenal-Hoang Anh Gia Lai JMG Football Academy – in a $4 million project with local Central Highlands team Hoang Anh Gia Lai.

The Premier League team also helped to construct a community football school – the Vinamilk-Arsenal Football School in HCM City to teach children to play football.

Last year, Viet Nam failed to invite Manchester United during their tours in Thailand.

Last November, ex-Manchester United and Liverpool including Andy Cole and Steve McManaman played in a two-day competition in Ha Noi.

In 2008, Viet Nam lost to Brazil's Olympic team, which included world stars Ronaldinho, Alexandre Pato, 2-0 in a friendly in Ha Noi. — VNS

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US writers launch books on Vietnam war

In mid-December, two US veterans and writers came to Vietnam to launch their works about the Vietnam war.

Larry Heinemann and Bruce Weigl have returned to Vietnam many times in
their capacity as writers and veterans who served in the war from
1967-68. This time they came with gifts – “Paco’s Story”, a novel by
Heinemann, and “The Circle of Hanh”, a memoir by Weigl – published in a
Vietnamese language version by the Women’s Publishing House.

Both books draw on the background of the Vietnam war and post-war
obsessions. The war finished more than 40 years ago but for the US
veterans, their memories about it are still haunting.

Paco’s Story (1986), the second and most critically acclaimed novel by
Heinemann, won the 1987 National Book Award for Fiction. It was
published in English, German, French and Spanish, and now in Vietnamese
with the translation by Pham Anh Tuan.

Paco's Story
relates the post-war experiences of its protagonist, haunted by the
ghosts of his dead comrades, who provide the novel's distinctive
narrative voice. The story deals with the seemingly contradictory and
morally ambiguous role of the soldier as both victimizer and victim.

Heinemann was born in 1944 in Chicago, Illinois. He
served a combat tour as a conscripted draftee in Vietnam from 1967 to
1968 with the 25 th Infantry Division. Besides short stories and
non-fiction, he wrote three novels, including “Close Quarters”, “Paco’s
Story” and “Cooler by the Lake”, and one memoir “Black Virgin Mountain”,
and three of these works are related to the Vietnam war.

Bruce Weigl was born in 1949 in Lorain, Ohio, and now teaches at Lorain County Community College.

In 1995, he adopted a Vietnamese girl, named Nguyen Thi Hanh, who
became the character of “The Circle of Hanh”, published in the US in
2000. Hanh translated this memoir into Vietnamese.

In “ The Circle of Hanh ”, Weigl writes, "The war took away my life and
gave me poetry in return...the fate the world has given me is to
struggle to write powerfully enough to draw others into the horror".

On the occasion, Weigl also launched his poetical memoir, “After the
Rain Stopped Pounding”, which has been translated into Vietnamese by
Nguyen Phan Que Mai and published by Youth Publishing House.

Both writers found truth, and recognised the futility and cruelty of
the war that they were involved in. Both of them were confronted by
their own war obsessions and created stories not only about actual truth
but also emotional truth./.

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Ha Long Bay ranks 6th among top 10 sailing cruises

Vietnam’s world heritage Ha Long Bay in the northern province of Quang
Ninh ranks sixth among the world’s top ten destinations for sailing
cruises by the US’s National Geographic book Journeys of a Lifetime.

The book wrote “Ha Long Bay, or the Bay of the Descending
Dragon, in northeastern Vietnam, is scattered with some 3,000
precipitous, strangely sculpted limestone islands and outcrops, and
dotted with small floating villages and deserted sandy beaches.

“In
spring and early summer the water is particularly calm and clear. This
UNESCO World Heritage site is best explored by a cruise on a junk.”

The other nine destinations are Nova Scotia and Labrador Tall Ships of
Canada; San Juan Islands, Washington; Pirate Cruise, Grand Cayman
Island of the UK; Star Clipper to French Polynesia of France; Junk
Cruise, Andaman Sea of Thailand; Seychelles Islands of Seychelles; Dhow
Cruise, Straits of Hormuz of Oman; Lamu Island of Kenya; and Evia Island
Cruise of Greece.

Earlier, Ha Long Bay was also listed among the
world’s top ten best and romantic destinations for 2011 by the UK
’s Lonely Planet magazine./.

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City football aims to stop relegation woes

HCM CITY – HCM City football has shown intentions of putting a stop to its shameful results over the last two years at local football competitions as HCM City and Navibank Sai Gon football clubs have revamped their teams for the new season.

During the last weekend of the 2009 V-League season, the city football witnessed the relegation of two clubs.

Sai Gon United was relegated to the Second Division despite a 2-0 win over Hoa Phat Ha Noi in the last match, and one day later, HCM City also suffered the same fate with a 3-2 defeat by Binh Duong.

There was no escaping the fact that city football had no representative in the 2010 V-League until Navibank Bank surprisingly bought the Military Zone 4 football club. They renamed it Navibank Sai Gon and chose Thong Nhat Stadium as its home ground.

However, Navibank Sai Gon was struggling at the bottom of the table throughout the season.

The club was relegated, but the fact that there were six fewer clubs in the First Division operating as a business handed Navibank a play-off with Quang Ninh. They escaped from relegation with a 2-0 win.

After being demoted to the First Division, HCM City continued its poor performance and had a disappointing season and only until the last round did the club escape from demotion.

Change for better

But the upcoming 2011 V-League season, the so-called professional football season, could be a different story as city-based clubs have made moves to build their teams that not only have survived the relegation but also have enough ability to move into the top half of the ranking.

Navibank splashed out a considerable amount of money on players, bringing in qualified strikers Nguyen Quang Hai from Khanh Hoa, Brazilian-Vietnamese striker Huynh Kesley Alves from Binh Duong and midfielder Luong Van Duoc Em from Dong Thap.

While Hai is the most prolific local striker last season with 13 goals, veteran Huynh Kesley has stamped his authority onto the V-League with his vast experience. Duoc Em was considered a promising young player last season.

"With new players joining the team and good preparation, we will try to finish the 2011 V-League at least in the middle of the table. We hope that the worries over the relegation will not be repeated," said Mai Duc Chung, head coach of Navibank Sai Gon.

By recruiting a foreign coach and bringing in some new faces, HCM City, the successor of the famous Sai Gon Port, has also made its intentions clear that they do not want to be a contender for the relegation in the next nine months.

The club recently signed a contract with Croatian coach Vjeran Simunic and hired Singaporean coach Robert Lim as a technical consultant. They have also recruited foreign players Lima and Cokolic from fellow club TDC Binh Duong.

Coach Simunic said that his team was ready for the new season. He believes the club will not have to face a battle to avoid relegation, as they did last season. VNS

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Games draw nation's elite

Pot luck: Nguyen Hoai Nam of Ha Noi takes a shot in the men's singles at the National Sports Games' billiards and snooker event at Da Nang's Nguyen Tri Phuong Gymnasium. — VNA/VNS Photo Van Son

HA NOI — The sixth National Sport Games will officially kick off tomorrow in the central city of Da Nang with a record 3,300 participants.

The festival, which is organised every four years, will see athletes competing in 11 sports.

Among the sports, tracks and field events have attracted the highest number of entries, featuring 452 contestants from 54 delegations. The chess events will feature 200 contestants from 40 teams.

The Games, which are the most important domestic sporting event of the year, will feature the cream of Vietnamese athletic talent, with a host of Asian and Southeast Asian champions and record holders. Top athletes include Truong Thanh Hang, Vu Thi Huong, Vu Van Huyen in track and field; Nguyen Tien Minh in badminton; and Le Quang Liem and Nguyen Ngoc Truong Son in chess.

Ha Noi currently lead the medal tally with 147 golds, 103 silvers and 105 bronzes. HCM City and the Military team stand second and third, respectively. Sixty four of the 66 delegations taking part have taken medals.

The opening ceremony will be held at the city's Chi Lang Stadium with the participation of four foreign visitors from China, Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar.

The closing ceremony will be on December 31. — VNS

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Liem to play amateurs ahead of Cup

International Grandmaster Le Quang Liem will compete with fans in an exhibition event ahead of the HD Bank Chess Cup in HCM City.

The national top master will play against 20 fans on December 28, with the amateur competitors selected from nearly 50 registrations for the event.

The organisers will present gifts and bonuses for a draw, the best match and the youngest player.

The international HD Bank Cup will be organised on January 4-9 luring more than 100 masters, including domestic and leading rivals in Asia.

A bonus of US$25,000 will be given to the winners.

Nation to host women's U19 tourney

Viet Nam will host the 2010 Asian Football Confederation (AFC) Under-19 Women's football Championship, the Viet Nam Football Federation (VFF) has announced.

A VFF website statement said the AFC has granted Viet Nam the right to stage the tournament which will officially take place from October 6-16 next year.

Hosts Viet Nam will be joined by the top five teams from the last edition – Japan, North Korea, South Korea, China and Australia.

The tournament will have a one-round league format to determine the champions.

Viet Nam grabbed the only ticket to the tournament's finals after finishing ahead of five teams in the second-round qualification with 10 points that came through three victories and one draw. — VNS

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