AFF Cup draw on May 21 in Hanoi, Vietnam team will soon meet Indonesia again?
Vietnam will be seeded in one group at the Southeast Asian Football Championship (AFF Cup) taking place later this year. Coach Kim Sang-sik’s team will likely meet Indonesia again in the group stage.
Why does the Vietnamese team score higher than Indonesia?
The AFF Cup 2024 will take place from November 23 to December 21. The draw for the tournament will take place in Hanoi on May 21.
Before the draw ceremony, a representative of the Vietnam Football Federation (VFF) said that the Vietnamese team will be the seed of one of the two groups at the AFF Cup 2024.
According to the seeding method in this tournament, the results of the last 2 AFF Cups will be taken into account. Accordingly, the champion team in each tournament will get 11 points, second place will have 10 points, third place will have 9 points, fourth place will have 8 points (seed points)... The number of seed points decreases according to the ranking of the teams in each tournament.
Thailand, with 2 consecutive championships, has 22 points, and will naturally be the seed in group 1. Vietnam and Indonesia have both finished second and reached the semi-finals once. However, Vietnam is better than Indonesia in terms of additional index.
Although the 2020 and 2022 AFF Cups do not have a third-place match, according to the rankings of the Southeast Asian Football Federation (AFF), the Vietnamese team ranked 3rd in the 2020 AFF Cup, while Indonesia only ranked 4th in the 2022 AFF Cup. Therefore, the Vietnamese team has a total of 19 points in the last 2 AFF Cups, while Indonesia only has a total of 18 points. Therefore, the team of coach Kim Sang-sik (Korean) is ranked higher than the team of coach Shin Tae-yong in terms of seeding.
This means that the Vietnamese team is in the same seed group as Thailand in this year's AFF Cup, we will be the seed of 1 group in the tournament. Indonesia and Malaysia (in the semi-finals of the AFF Cup 2022) will be in seed group 2. With this detail, the Indonesian team is likely to be in the same group as the Vietnamese team (if the Vietnamese team is in the same group as Indonesia, it will be in a different group than Malaysia, or vice versa).
Interesting confrontation between two compatriots Shin Tae-yong and Kim Sang-sik
This could be the draw result that Vietnamese fans are looking forward to. Fans and experts in the country in general are eager to see the Vietnamese team meet Indonesia again, after we lost bitterly to the archipelago team 3 times this year, including 1 time at the 2023 Asian Cup (taking place in early 2024) and 2 times in the 2nd qualifying round of the 2026 World Cup in Asia, in March.
Singapore fell into pot 3 along with the Philippines. Singapore also has 15 seed points like Malaysia, but is inferior to its opponent in terms of additional index. Pot 4 has Myanmar and Cambodia. Only Laos is in pot 5, in the same group with one of the two teams that will play in the play-off round of the AFF Cup 2024, Brunei and Timor Leste.
With this calculation, the most difficult group that the Vietnamese team can face at this year's AFF Cup will be the group with Indonesia, the Philippines, Myanmar and Laos. The format of the AFF Cup 2024 is similar to the format of the last 3 AFF Cups 2018, 2020 and 2022. That is, the 10 teams participating in the AFF Cup finals will be divided into 2 groups, each group has 5 teams.
Teams play a round robin in the group stage, at home and away (each team has 2 home and 2 away matches, drawn by lots). The top 2 teams in each group advance to the semi-finals. From the semi-finals onwards, matches are played in a knockout format over 2 home and away matches.
