U23 Vietnam has a clear path to the 2020 Tokyo Olympics

At the 2020 AFC U23 Championship finals, the top three teams will qualify for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. If host Japan is among the top three, the remaining spot will go to the fourth-placed team. The path to the 2020 Olympics is clear, Coach Park Hang-seo and his team must pass the group stage and win in the quarterfinals.

Unstoppable

The Asian Football Confederation homepage rated U23 Vietnam as an “unstoppable” team. Looking at the squad in Group D, Jordan is the only team in Group D that won the bronze medal in 2013. The other two teams, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea and the UAE, have never made it to the top 4. Obviously, as runner-up, we are the seed and with a bit more luck, we did not meet the “giants” early in the group stage.

Draw results for the 2020 AFC U23 Championship. Photo: AFC

With no past achievements, the current form of U23 UAE, Jordan and DPRK all have 7/9 points. DPRK was even held to a 1-1 draw by Singapore. In addition to the absolute winning record in the qualifying round (winning 9 absolute points, scoring 11 goals, not conceding any), U23 Vietnam is a rare team to participate in all continental events in 2018.

Meanwhile, UAE failed to qualify for the U23 Asia Championship last time, Jordan failed to qualify for the Asian Games last year. In Park’s hands, he has young players approaching continental level such as Quang Hai and Van Hau.

Three advantages

First, U23 Vietnam is in group D, playing the latest match of the third round on January 16. At that time, the situation of groups A, B and especially group C has been decided. Coach Park Hang-seo can even choose his next opponent in group C. With a lighter group, Mr. Park's students will also have to spend less effort than the opponents in other groups.

In the group stage, we will also compete with increasing difficulty. Van Hau and his teammates will face two opponents from West Asia, UAE and Jordan, seeded groups number 3 and number 4, before facing the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (group 2) in the final match.

Of the three opponents, only U23 UAE has ever beaten Vietnam in the third place match of the Asian Games on penalties. In the last two meetings, North Korea and Jordan football teams have not beaten Vietnam. Most recently, at the club level, Hanoi FC had a draw against April 25, the top team in North Korea. Obviously, of the three opponents in Group D, U23 Vietnam is not afraid of any opponent, on the contrary, the opponents have reason to be afraid of Vietnam.

North Korea U23 is the biggest competitor of Vietnam U23. Photo: Fox

Since Coach Park Hang-seo led U23 Vietnam to Thailand to play the M150 Cup, a tournament to prepare for the U23 Asian Cup in Changzhou, U23 Vietnam defeated U23 Thailand 2-1 in the third-place match with a double from Cong Phuong. When the Vietnam team participated in the King's Cup, Chang Arena also witnessed the Vietnam team defeat the Thailand team 1-0.

The only disadvantage is that U23 Vietnam has “revealed its true nature”, there is no longer the element of surprise like in Changzhou (China) 2 years ago. Surely the opponents have carefully studied the playing style of coach Park Hang-seo and his team.

Getting a ticket to the men's football event at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics has never been easy. But with a series of subjective and objective advantages and a squad of experienced players, Coach Park Hang-seo and his team have every right to think about flying to Japan.