Wednesday 29 June 2022, 20:00

Vietnam Football Federation talk about recent progress in meeting with FIFA President

  • VFF delegation meets FIFA President in Paris

  • Vietnam will play at their first FIFA Women’s World Cup next year

  • VFF benefits from international cooperation

Vietnam's recent progress in football was among the topics discussed when a delegation from the Vietnam Football Federation (VFF) met with FIFA President Gianni Infantino and FIFA Senior Vice-President and AFC President Sheikh Salman Bin Ebrahim Al Khalifa, in Paris. The VFF delegation was headed by its Acting President Dr. Tran Quoc Tuan.

On the women’s side, Vietnam have qualified for the FIFA Women's World Cup™ for the first time and will take part in next year's tournament in Australia and New Zealand, which has been expanded from 24 to 32 teams.

There has also been a significant improvement in results for the men's national team, a sign that more teams are becoming competitive on a global level. Vietnam reached the quarter-finals at the AFC Asian Cup in 2019 and have qualified for the 2023 tournament and, having dropped as low as 153rd in the FIFA/Coca-Cola World Ranking in 2015, they are currently at 97th.

"During the discussion, the FIFA President and the AFC President said they appreciated the progress and the improvement of Vietnamese football in recent years," said VFF General Secretary Le Hoai Anh. "Our President, the football federation President, also shared the passion for football [among] the Vietnamese people."

Football fans celebrate outside the My Dinh stadium

"We discussed how we have [been able] to make Vietnamese football progress in the last few years through international cooperation with strong football nations in the world in East Asia and also in Europe," he said.

"Therefore, our (national) women’s team qualified, for the first time, for the FIFA Women’s World Cup in Australia and New Zealand in 2023. We hope that one day we can see the men’s team have a chance to play in the final rounds of the FIFA World Cup.”

Vietnam players celebrate