This afternoon (January 23), the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) conducted the draw for the 2025 AFC U17 Championship finals, taking place from April 3 to 20 in Saudi Arabia.
The tournament has 16 participating teams, including 15 qualifying teams and host Saudi Arabia.
At the draw, AFC divided 16 teams into 4 groups of 4 teams each. Based on the rankings of the 3 most recent final rounds (2023, 2018, 2016) in order of 100%, 50% and 25% of the respective rankings, U17 Vietnam is in the third seed group with Thailand, Oman and Afghanistan.
Group 1 seeds include the teams: Saudi Arabia (host of the final round), Japan, South Korea, Iran.
Seed group number 2 includes the teams: Australia, Yemen, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and seed group number 4 includes: China, North Korea, Indonesia, UAE.
According to the draw results, U17 Vietnam will face a huge challenge when they are in a group with defending champion Japan, Australia - a team that has reached the semi-finals three times and UAE - a team in the fourth seed group but also very formidable.
Starting from the 2025 U17 World Cup finals held in Qatar, FIFA decided to increase the number of participating teams from 24 to 48.
Asia has been given eight places and the opportunity for Asian youth teams to participate in the 2025 U17 World Cup has been doubled. This also means that the eight teams that reach the quarterfinals of the 2025 U17 Asian Finals will participate in the 2025 U17 World Cup.
The official schedule of the 2025 AFC U17 Finals will be announced by AFC in the near future.
