Vietnamese futsal – more and more organized and methodical

Second World Cup

In 2016, the Vietnamese futsal team caused a sensation when they knocked down the Asian champion Japan in the quarterfinals of the Asian futsal tournament to win direct tickets to the 2017 futsal World Cup. In the first appearance, Mr. Bruno Garcia’s team continued to create a great buzz when passing the group stage. Realizing the dream in the world playground for the first time is a miracle, but continuing to maintain that achievement is not easy when many other Asian countries such as Iraq, Lebanon, Indonesia… also pay great investment for futsal. Therefore, the challenge for Vietnam Team in winning the right to play in the World Cup for the second time was not small.

Despite facing the great challenge of the Covid-19 pandemic, Vietnam Team still had a thorough preparation process and obtained satisfactory results. Led by local coach Pham Minh Giang for the first time, Vietnam Team not only won tickets to the World Cup 2021 but also made a stronger mark in the playing field in Lithuania when they had the same 4 points as the second place team (Czech) and obviously, came to the knockout round. In this round, Van Vu and his teammates gave the spectator a quality match and only held back against the defending world runner-up Russia 2-3. This is considered a highlight of Vietnamese futsal at the national team level in the past 4 years, in addition to the Top 3 achievements in regional tournaments. At the 2022 Asian futsal tournament, Vietnam Team also won tickets to the quarterfinals after 2 wins and 1 loss in the group stage.

It can be seen that all the preparation and competition plans of the national teams in the past few years have been seriously affected by Covid-19. Vietnam Team was no exception. However, the Vietnam Football Federation with the relationship as well as the initiative has helped Vietnam Team to have the best preparation plan under the conditions allowed. As before the play-off match to determine the ticket to the 2021 World Cup with Lebanon, Pham Minh Giang’s team had 2 friendly matches against a strong opponent- Iraq, in the UAE. Or in the journey to prepare for the World Cup 2021, Vietnam Team had a training trip and attended the four-hero tournament against very strong opponents, Spain, Japan and Guatemala in Spain…

It is being given the opportunity to prepare and play friendly matches with high-class futsal teams that have helped the Vietnamese team improve their experience, bravery and expertise, so that they can compete well in the World Cup and ASIAN tournaments…

Domestic tournaments are becoming more and more regular

Vietnam Team continues to leave a strong impression every time participating in continental and world tournaments, but in order to achieve that success, it must be seen that the quality of domestic tournaments has been increasingly improved the image of Vietnam futsal team. In this goal, the Vietnam Football Federation always aims to build domestic tournaments according to the standards of professional futsal tournaments and is increasingly improving according to those criteria.

In order to ensure that the quality of the matches is good, thrilling and beautiful, without creating a big difference in level between the teams when participating in the championship race, the division of the teams into 2 groups to compete is absolutely necessary. That’s why the league is divided into 2 phases when phase 1 is considered a qualifying round to identify some good qualified teams in phase 2 to race with the teams with good results from the previous season. It is this “distillation” that makes the championship race in the national futsal championship become more quality and thrilling. Under the direction of the Vietnam Football Federation, the futsal tournament has also been held in some other localities such as Lam Dong, Dak Lak, Can Tho… not just in Ho Chi Minh City. This is also a way to bring futsal to more spectators, promote and encourage the futsal movement to develop more widely in the country.

The construction of the schedule is also more and more scientific when the teams have a better break to recover their expertise so that they can better contribute to the next match, instead of having to compete with a density of 2 days/match as before. In particular, the image of domestic futsal tournaments is also becoming more and more professional when the players comply with the rules better, there are no more offensive images as usual. In other words, the competitive spirit of the players, the attitude of the team members attending the tournaments have also been changed in a more professional direction before the drastic change from the way tournaments are organized by Vietnam Football Federation.