Vietnam has a chance to win another ticket to the Asian Cup 1 from Thailand.

In the AFC club tournament rankings updated at the beginning of the 2022 season,V.Leaguehas surpassed Thai League to climb to 5th place in Southeast Asia. Meanwhile, Thailand's national championship was pushed down to 6th place.

V-League surpassed Thailand, climbing to 12th place in Asia and 5th in Southeast Asia. Photo: Internet

In previous years, the Thai League was always in the Top 5 national championships with the highest coefficient in the region. This helped the Thai League always have 1+2 places to participate in the Asian Cup C1 (1 team goes straight to the group stage, 2 teams play the preliminary round). However, now they are at risk of losing 1 place to participate in the 2024 Asian Cup to Vietnam.

Specifically, if this ranking is maintained until the end of the scoring in February 2023, Thailand will lose 1 qualifying round spot to Vietnam, leaving the Thai League with only 1+1 spot to participate in the 2024 Asian Cup C1. Meanwhile, Vietnam will have 3 spots including 1 team going straight to the group stage, 2 teams playing the qualifying round. Remember that in the past, Thailand has never fallen out of the Top 5 since 2014.

HAGL is the representative competing in the AFC Champions League 2022.Photo: HAGL

The rankings are based on the 2019 results (due to the cancellation of the AFC Cup in 2020 and 2021, points are not counted). In 2019, the V-League representative, Hanoi FC, performed very successfully in the AFC Cup, reaching the semi-finals, so many points were added, while the Thai representative, Buriram FC, performed poorly in the ACL, so many points were deducted.

The AFC Club Competitions Ranking, also known as the AFC Club Competitions Ranking, is a ranking system launched by the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) in 2014. The ranking is based on the performance of clubs in the AFC Champions League and AFC Cup in the last four seasons to allocate places to participate in continental competitions.

For Song Lam Nghe An, this will be a great advantage for the team after a strong restructuring since being taken over by Tan Long, which has nothing else but to conquer the V-League championship after 10 years of waiting. Thereby, the Nghe team will have the opportunity to participate in the AFC Champions League in the coming years.

But the ambition of the Vinh Stadium team does not stop there. According to the recent sharing of Mr. Truong Manh Linh - General Director of the team, the goal of Song Lam Nghe An in the next 5 years is to strive to become the leading club in Southeast Asia.

Mr. Truong Manh Linh said: "Song Lam Nghe An's vision in the next 5 years is to become the leading professional club in Vietnam in particular and Southeast Asia in general."

Vietnamese football has two representatives in the Asian Cup this season, Viettel competes in the AFC Cup and HAGL competes in the AFC Champions League. In the Champions League, the draw results put HAGL in a very difficult group H with the participation of Jeonbuk Hyundai Motors - the champion of K-League 1 and Yokohama F. Marinos - the runner-up of J-League 1.

Meanwhile, at the AFC Cup arena, Viettel fell into a fairly easy group with Hongang United (Singapore), Phnom Penh Crown (Cambodia) and Hanthawaddy United (Myanmar).