Thai football legend Kiatisuk to part ways with HAGL to coach Hanoi club

“Coach Kiatisuk will get to work as soon as possible,” a leader of the Hanoi club, told VnExpress. “Kiatisuk wants to coach a big club with ambition, so we recruited him, to help the club maintain on top of V. League and reach out to Asia.”

Kiatisuk is currently in Thailand. He’s expected to fly to Hanoi this week and sign a contract with CAHN.

CAHN reached an initial agreement with former Thailand national coach Mano Polking on Jan. 5. However, the deal collapsed as both sides did not find common ground on salary and goals. Polking’s ability was also questioned when he did not succeed during his spell as the coach of Vietnamese club HCMC FC and was recently sacked by Thailand.

Kiatisuk is a Thai football legend who won V. League titles with HAGL in 2003 and 2004 as a player. In 2020, he returned to HAGL as the club’s head coach. He was also the head coach of Thailand national team from 2014-2017, achieving great success.

In the first season, he helped HAGL top V. League after 12 rounds with 29 points. But the league was later canceled because of Covid-19. Since then, HAGL have no longer been able to maintain their form. The club ended the 2022 season at eighth, battled relegation in the 2023 season and are in last place this season with only five points after eight matches.

Kiatisuk said that because the club’s owner did not spend much on buying new players, he had to use young players from the academy and this explained the poor results.

With CAHN, Kiatisuk will have a better squad. The defending V. League champions have a star-studded squad with national team players like Filip Nguyen, Doan Van Hau, Bui Hoang Viet Anh, Phan Van Duc, Ho Tan Tai and Nguyen Quang Hai.

The Thai coach will have more than a month to get used to his job, because this seson of V. League is on break as the Vietnam national football team will attend the 2024 Asian Cup until Feb. 18.

CAHN hope that with Kiatisuk, the team will end a long period of finding a suitable coach. They recruited former Vietnam U23 coach Gong Oh-kyun, but the South Korean coach disappointed with four consecutive league matches without winning and was sacked. Technical director Tran Tien Dai was assigned to be the interim coach but recently received a three-match ban for reacting to the referee.