Analyzing the strengths and advantages of U23 Vietnam in Group C of the 2024 AFC U23 Championship qualifiers

The 2024 AFC U23 Championship qualifiers will take place from September 6-12. Among the Southeast Asian teams, Coach Troussier's U23 Vietnam team has the best chance of reaching the finals.

Coach Philippe Troussier and the U23 Vietnam players are determined to compete in the 2024 U23 Asian qualifiers. (Source: VFF)

According to the regulations of the 2024 AFC U23 Championship, the 11 leading teams of the 11 qualifying groups, along with the 4 second-placed teams with the best results, will qualify for the final round (Finals) with host Qatar.

In the qualifying round of the U23 Asian Cup, U23 Vietnam is in Group C with Singapore, Yemen and Guam. Of these, Guam is too weak, not worth mentioning.

Singapore can also be ranked among the weakest teams in the youth teams. The reason is that Singapore football currently does not have an abundant source of young players, plus they do not use naturalized players in the youth teams, so there is always a huge difference between the Singapore national team and the teams from the U23 level and below of this country.

In fact, U23 Vietnam easily defeated U23 Singapore 3-1 at the SEA Games in May this year in Cambodia. Before that, we also defeated this team 7-0 at the U23 Southeast Asian tournament last year.

That almost means that coach Philippe Troussier's team will almost certainly have at least the second place in Group C, including winning the second place with good points and sub-indexes. This is a very important criterion for U23 Vietnam to be able to compete with the second-place teams in other groups.

Even, U23 Vietnam has enough basis to think about the top spot in Group C, along with the first-class ticket to the U23 Asian Cup Finals. Our remaining opponent in this group, Yemen, is an unknown.

Yemen is a West Asian team, in theory the quality of Yemeni players is better than Vietnamese players. However, in terms of tactical organization and tactical discipline, they are not sure to be better than Coach Troussier's team.

In addition, the unstable situation in the country makes it difficult for Yemeni U23 players to practice and compete regularly, so their performance may not be as good as Vietnamese players. Not to mention that Vietnam U23 also has the advantage of playing at home in Viet Tri (Phu Tho).

Therefore, compared to other teams in Southeast Asia, the door to the 2024 AFC U23 Championship finals for U23 Vietnam is the widest. In Group H (held in Thailand), 3 Southeast Asian teams including Thailand, Malaysia and the Philippines must compete for tickets together. Next to them is Bangladesh.

The fact that the teams of Thailand, Malaysia and the Philippines are of similar level may make it difficult for these teams to make breakthroughs in terms of points and goal difference, in case they are second in the table, they need to compete with the other second-placed teams.

Only the winner of Group H is guaranteed a place in the finals. But to get the top spot in this group, Thailand, Malaysia and the Philippines will have to compete fiercely. Similarly, in Group K, host Indonesia also only hopes to win the group to ease the anxiety in finding a ticket to the finals.

The teams in this group, including Chinese Taipei and Turkmenistan (group K has only 3 teams), are not too far away in terms of level compared to U23 Indonesia, so coach Shin Tae Yong's team will find it difficult to make a breakthrough in terms of points and goal difference if they finish second in the group.

Meanwhile, U23 Cambodia has almost no chance against Saudi Arabia, Lebanon and Mongolia in group J, U23 Laos is too weak compared to Australia and Tajikistan in group I (this group also has only 3 teams because the Democratic People's Republic of Korea withdrew), Myanmar is also weaker than South Korea and Kyrgyzstan in group B.

Timor Leste (Group F) and Brunei (Group A) are too weak, their strength is not significant in the international tournaments they participate in.

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