Aspiration of U23 Yemen
1 month after winning the 2025 U23 Southeast Asian Championship, U23 Vietnam entered the 2026 U23 Asian qualifiers with great ambition and meticulous preparation.
22/24 players that coach Kim Sang-sik called up are the faces that have just won the regional tournament in Indonesia. Nguyen Thanh Nhan, one of the two added names, is a veteran face in this generation of players. Meanwhile, Tran Thanh Trung (Chung Nguyen Do) is a talented overseas Vietnamese player who has just returned to Vietnam to play for about a month.
The mistake of his predecessor Troussier when he could not win the absolute qualifiers in the U23 Asian qualifiers 2 years ago was a big lesson that the Korean strategist did not want to repeat.
Mr. Kim's seriousness partly comes from objective reasons. In this group, U23 Yemen clearly showed their ambition to overcome Vietnam to participate in the final round. In recent years, Vietnamese youth have always had difficulty against Yemen. Most recently, in the 2024 U17 Asian qualifiers, coach Cristiano Roland's team ranked behind their Western Asian opponent.
Looking forward to the qualifying round in Viet Tri (Phu Tho), U23 Yemen has trained carefully and had a training trip in the UAE. The national team played a closed friendly match with a series of quality blue players to ensure tactics and playing style.
Regarding the squad, coach Amin Al Suneini called up 3 national players to the squad, Abdulaziz Masnoum, Qassem Al-Sharafi and Hamza Mahrous with positions in the attack. Hamza Mahrous is the third quality striker in the Yemen national team.
U23 Yemen is assessed by regional press as having the ability to overthrow U23 Vietnam, based on their physical foundation, good stature as well as hiding surprises in their playing style.
It should be added that through the recent U23 Southeast Asian finals, coach Amin Al Suneini has grasped a lot of information about tactics and lineups from U23 Vietnam. Meanwhile, Mr. Kim Sang-sik and his assistants are facing obstacles in exploiting tactics and data from opponents.
U23 Bangladesh, U23 Singapore are not to be afraid
The match between U23 Vietnam and U23 Yemen on September 9 may be the "final" in Group C of the 2026 U23 Asian qualifiers. Because before that, the two opponents U23 Singapore and U23 Bangladesh were not highly appreciated.
With U23 Singapore, they only registered a mostly young player force under 20 years old. The oldest child was born in 2003 (22 years old) and the rest were born from 2005 onwards. There are even 3 faces who are only 17 years old: Harith Danish, Luth Harith and Rae Peh.
In fact, it is not surprising that the Lion Island team uses an inexperienced squad and rarely has international competition. Last month, they withdrew from the Southeast Asian U23 tournament due to limited professional qualifications. This is also the reason why Singaporean football was almost not approved to compete in the 33rd SEA Games in Thailand.
Therefore, U23 Singapore is considered an easy opponent that Bangladesh, Vietnam or Yemen can exploit in the upcoming qualifiers.
U23 Bangladesh has the advantage over U23 Singapore in terms of preparation. In the list of 23 players, this team registered Cuban midfielder Mitchell, born in 2005 in Birmingham (UK), 1m80 tall, with a Jamaica grandfather and a Bangladesh mother. Cuba has trained and played for the youth teams of Birmingham and Sunderland.
U23 Bangladesh is also determined not to become a "travel" team in the U23 Asian qualifiers. The proof is that coach Saiful Bari Titu and his team have had a quality training trip in Bahrain as well as played 2 friendly matches with U23 Bahrain.
Despite losing both matches with scores of 0-1 and 2-4, according to Bangladesh media, the U23 team still has the potential to create a surprise in the upcoming U23 Asian qualifiers.
