Vietnam Football Association
Aim for 2026
The Vietnamese national team defeated the Chinese team 3-1 at home on the first day of the Spring Festival of the Year of the Tiger on February 1, which greatly boosted the morale of Vietnam, and coupled with the vietnamese women's football team's historic first time in the 2023 Women's World Cup finals, it also gave Vietnam the hope of the men's football team to break into the World Cup. The acting chairman of the Vietnam Football Association, Tan Quoc Joon, has revealed that the Vietnam Football Association has fully shifted its goal to the 2026 World Cup finals and will take a series of measures, the core of which is to comprehensively improve the competition level of domestic U16, U19 and U23 youth teams and accelerate the training of young players.
1
The winning Chinese team is more confident of impacting 2026
Vietnam has declared that there is no hope of qualifying after the first six rounds of the Qatar World Preliminary Round of 12 matches, although the team and head coach Park Hengxu have been under a lot of pressure, but in the two rounds of matches before and after the New Year, the team's biggest goal is to use the home field to defeat the Chinese team, and the Vietnam Football Association has also begun negotiations with Park Hengxu, that is, the team will turn its goal to the 2026 World Cup, because on the one hand, the team is the first time to play in the top 12. On the other hand, from the 2026 World Cup, the number of teams participating in the final stage will be increased from the current 32 to 48, and the number of qualifying places in Asia will increase to 8.5, which is more realistic than aiming at the World Cup in four years. Winning the Chinese team can further boost the morale of Vietnamese football and better move towards the 2026 World Cup.
In the end, the Vietnamese team defeated the Chinese team as desired. In recent days, the Vietnamese government, from the president of the country to the prime minister to the president of the National Assembly, has successively received the Vietnamese men's national football team and the Vietnam women's national football team, and the encouragement of Vietnamese football cannot be underestimated. The Vietnam Football Association seized the opportunity and proposed a plan for comprehensive preparations for the 2026 World Cup.
According to the opinions and ideas put forward by the acting president of the Vietnam Football Association, Tran Kwok Chun, if the Vietnamese national team wants to impact the World Cup, it needs better players, so the core focus should be to further improve the quality of Existing Youth Players in Vietnam and cultivate and tap better young players. Therefore, the focus of the Vietnam Football Association's next work should be to pay close attention to the players of the three age groups of U16, U19 and U21, because Vietnamese domestic football has set up a national competition for these three age groups, and it may also be players who can be used when they impact the 2026 World Cup in the future. In addition to these three age groups, the Vietnam Football Association also hosts the U13 and U15 national leagues, and on this basis, it plays national U9 and U11 competitions.
2
The U17 national junior team went to Dela for three months of training
On the basis of doing a good job in national leagues, the Vietnam Football Association plans to host more international competitions in the three age groups of U16, U19 and U21, or to create opportunities for international competitions. Therefore, the Vietnam Football Association has reached an agreement with the German side at the end of last year that a Vietnamese U17 national team will be selected to go to Germany for three months of training.
Since December 15 last year, 44 Vietnamese players from the 2005 and 2006 age groups have gathered at the Vietnam Football Association National Youth Training Center for training. In order to achieve its goal of once again leading the youth team to the World Series, the Vietnam Football Association has re-hired the head coach of the Vietnamese youth team who led the 97-year-old Vietnamese youth team to break into the final four at the 2016 Bahrain Asian Youth Championship and reached the world championship for the first time in history, and re-emerged as the head coach of this national junior team.
According to the plan, Huang Yingjun will select about 30 of these 44 players to travel to Germany at the end of this month and early next month. According to the agreement reached between the Vietnam Football Association and the German side, the Vietnam U17 junior team will play with the same age teams of at least six clubs, including Borussia Dortmund, Borussia Monchengladbach and Frankfurt, in order to improve the level of these young players as soon as possible. One of the teams' goals is for the 2006 age group to compete for the 2023 U17 Asian Cup, and in the long run, the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics.
3
Adjust the age of participation in the National U19 League
In the U19 area, later this month, the annual Vietnam U19 National League will be in full swing. According to figures released by the Vietnam Football Association, the number of teams registered for this year's Vietnam U19 National League reached 33, which is the largest number of teams ever registered, and there have never been more than 30 teams in the past, generally 25 to 28 teams.
The increase in the number of teams registered has a lot to do with the Vietnam Football Association's change and relaxation of the age of players participating in this competition. In previous years, the National U19 Youth League hosted by the Vietnam Football Association only allowed the youngest player to be at least 16 years old, but from the current tournament in 2022, the Vietnam Football Association allowed U15 players, that is, 2007 age group players, to compete with the 2003 age group players. Another important reason for the relaxation is that due to the impact of the epidemic, the Vietnam Football Association has not hosted national low-age youth competitions for two consecutive years, that is, 2020 and 2021, but only retained the U21 and U19 national leagues, so this is also hoping to give more players the opportunity to play. In addition, some players are preparing to go to Germany because they participate in the training of the U17 national team, while some U19 players have been transferred to the Vietnamese U23 team to Cambodia to participate in the Southeast Asia U23 Championship, so that the participating teams can have enough players to complete the event task.
In addition to relaxing the age of the participating players, the Vietnam Football Association has also made a number of adjustments to the competition itself. The aim is to comprehensively promote the standard of domestic youth players. After the first stage of the competition is completed, the Vietnam Football Association will form the U19 national youth team to start preparing for the U20 Asian Cup qualifiers in September this year.
4
Preparing for international competitions invites Korea and Japan to strengthen the team
In recent years, the Vietnam Football Association has been hosting U19 and U21 international competitions, but the invited teams are basically concentrated in Southeast Asian teams, and occasionally invite teams like Japan's university students and South Korea's professional club echelons to participate. Affected by the epidemic, Vietnam has not hosted an international youth competition for two consecutive years. To this end, the Vietnam Football Association plans to host two high-level international competitions for the U19 and U21 age groups this year, and the goal is very clear, that is, it hopes to invite the best Teams in Asia to participate, rather than dominating Southeast Asian clubs.
Previously, the acting president of the Vietnam Football Association, Tan Kwok Chun, took advantage of the Vietnamese national team's plan to play in the round of 12 and signed memorandums with a number of football associations competing in the top 12, one of which was to invite the young national teams from these countries and regions to participate in the competition in Vietnam. As Tran Kwok Joon said, "In 2021, after the Vietnam Football Association has renewed its cooperation agreements with Japan and South Korea, many new cooperative football associations have been added, including Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, hoping to further strengthen exchanges and cooperation among young people and establish a stable development platform."
"Therefore, we in the Vietnam Football Association have issued an invitation to the Football Associations of these countries in accordance with the current actual situation, hoping that they can send national youth teams to Vietnam to participate in two youth competitions, one is the U19 international youth competition scheduled for April 10-16, and the other is the U21 international youth competition scheduled for April 24-30. Hopefully, international travel will no longer be an issue and that our youth players will also have more international exchange opportunities so that our youth players can gain more experience in international competitions. ”
The reason why the Vietnamese national team can achieve today's achievements is not unrelated to the historic breakthrough of the Vietnamese 97 age team in the 2016 U19 Asian Youth Championship and the ticket to the World Youth Championship, and the Vietnamese 95 age team in the 2018 Changzhou U23 Asian Championship final is not unrelated, it is precisely these two groups of players, the 95 age group and the 97 age group composed of the Vietnamese national team can compete with the strong forces at the Asian level, which makes the Vietnamese national team able to get to where it is today. It is precisely because it has tasted the sweetness that the Vietnam Football Association has "followed the law" and continued to vigorously grasp the youth and take this as a breakthrough. In contrast, is Chinese football opportunistically opportunistically trying to grasp the youth team or continue to be as eager for quick success and "naturalization" as this World Preliminary Tournament? It's actually easy to find the answer. Because the laws of football are clearly placed there.