At 10:40 p.m. on July 30, the U23 Vietnam team arrived at Noi Bai airport (Hanoi) after winning the 2025 U23 Southeast Asian Championship. Previously, coach Kim Sang-sik and his team departed from Indonesia at 1:50 p.m., landing at Tan Son Nhat before connecting to Hanoi.
Welcoming U23 Vietnam at the airport were Mr. Hoang Dao Cuong - Deputy Minister of Culture, Sports and Tourism, Mr. Nguyen Hong Minh - Deputy Director of the Department of Physical Education and Sports and Mr. Hoang Quoc Vinh - Head of the High-performance Sports Department, Department of Physical Education and Sports and representatives of the Vietnam Football Federation.
At the 2025 Southeast Asian U23, U23 Vietnam convincingly won the championship with a series of all-win matches. Khuat Van Khang and his teammates defeated U23 Laos 3-0, U23 Cambodia 2-1 (group stage), then won 2-1 against U23 Philippines in the semi-finals and beat U23 Indonesia 1-0 in the final match.
This is the third consecutive time U23 Vietnam has won the regional tournament. Since the tournament returned in 2019 after nearly two decades of interruption, the U23 Vietnam team has only failed to win the championship once, which was in 2019 in Cambodia with the 3rd place overall.
This victory also extended the impressive streak of coach Kim Sang-sik since taking charge. For more than a year, he has led the Vietnamese national team at all levels to conquer two regional championships, the 2024 ASEAN Cup and the 2025 U23 Southeast Asian Cup - both away and achieving a 100% championship rate in official tournaments.
