Ho Chi Minh City Women's Football Club before historic milestone

Chelsea Le and Ashley Tram Anh are ready to write a new history page for Ho Chi Minh City Women's Football Club with their teammates - Photo: QUANG THINH

The quarter-final match between the host HCMC Women's Football Club and Abu Dhabi Country FC will take place at 7:30 p.m. at Thong Nhat Stadium. In this match, spectators are allowed to enter the stadium freely.

The mighty Abu Dhabi Country

In this match, Abu Dhabi Country (ADC) registered 12 foreign players, which is nearly half of the 26-player squad. Although the tournament regulations do not limit the number of foreign players registered, only a maximum of 6 people can be used, including 1 foreign player of Asian nationality. Therefore, ADC registered 2 strikers from Japan and Nepal as backup.

Accordingly, coach Sara Hassanien (Egypt) registered up to 7 foreign players from Ghana - including 3 players on the attack line, 3 midfielders and 1 central defender. In addition, ADC also has 1 Brazilian goalkeeper, 1 Ukrainian central defender, 1 midfielder of Algerian origin. ADC's domestic squad has 14 players.

With a strong force, ADC is 1 of 2 teams participating from the qualifying round to the quarter-finals of the AFC Champions Women's 2024 - 2025.

In the qualifiers, they won all 3 matches against Young Elephants (Laos), Myawady (Myanmar) and Al Nassr (Saudi Arabia). In the group stage, ADC beat Wuhan Jiangda (China) 2-1 and drew 2-2 with Sabah (Malaysia) and Incheon Red Angels (Korea).

ADC finished second in Group A with 5 points, scoring 6 goals and conceding 5. Rekha Poudel (Nepal), Eugenia Korkor Tetteh (Ghana) and Juma Ibrahim (UAE) each scored 2 goals since the qualifying round.

Striker Huynh Nhu commented: "The Ho Chi Minh City Women's Football Club has also carefully studied their opponents. Because ADC has many quality foreign players, we will have to focus, follow the tactics and take advantage of opportunities to defeat them."

History waiting to be called Ho Chi Minh City Women's Club

To prepare for the quarter-final match, Ho Chi Minh City Women's Club has been searching for and recruiting foreign players to replace them recently.

This is because the club had to say goodbye to all three previous American players: striker Meghan Root, midfielder Tatiana Mason, and center back Talani Barnet. Therefore, coach Nguyen Hong Pham and the coaching staff had to start from scratch because they could not sign long-term contracts with foreign players.

Accordingly, the team has registered two American foreign players, striker Sabrina Marie Cabrera (born in 2001) and center back Aubrey Rae Goodwill (born in 1998). Instead of finding another foreign player, the HCMC women's club has added two Vietnamese-American players, Ashley Tram Anh and Chelsea Le.

Chelsea Le (born in 2001) was allowed by coach Mai Duc Chung to practice with the Vietnam U19 women's team in 2019. Over the past four years, this female striker has developed comprehensively and played very well for Gonzaga University. Chelsea Le also won the title of "Best Midfielder of 2024" of the West Coast Conference (WCC) sports system. As soon as they saw Chelsea Le's video, the team immediately contacted her.

Meanwhile, Ashley Tram Anh is considered a necessary addition to the midfield when the central positions of the HCMC Women's Club are a bit thin. Although only 1.52m tall, Tram Anh has good speed and ball handling ability through her time playing in the US.

Except for Tram Anh, Chelsea Le, Sabrina and Goodwill all participated in the training session in Hanoi last week. And Sabrina scored from Chelsea Le's assist. All 3 new players are assessed to have integrated quickly thanks to the friendly environment of the female players in Ho Chi Minh City.

Ho Chi Minh City Women’s Football Club can continue to write the history of Vietnamese women’s football if they beat Abu Dhabi Country to reach the semi-finals. In addition, they will receive a bonus of 120,000 USD from the tournament organizers for this achievement.

Not only Ho Chi Minh City, but also Vietnamese women's football is waiting for tonight's performance of Huynh Nhu and her teammates.

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QUANG THINH