Going through the first matches of the 2026 World Cup, the first thing you can feel is that there is very little difference in level. For example, the Haitian national team, they are underestimated because they are less famous, less noticed, because it took 52 years to return to the World Cup and rank 83rd in the world (47th out of 48 teams in the finals) - which is also only 16 places higher than the Vietnamese national team, but they are willing to play fairly with the Scottish national team (42nd in the world).
Although losing 0-1, ignoring tactical issues, the easily noticeable issue is that the physique and fitness of the team from North America are very good. Similarly, South Korea and Qatar had good results against European representatives Czech Republic, Switzerland, and then Morocco, causing Brazil to draw points, further showing that beautiful football is technique, but no matter what, physique, strength, and endurance are important factors to decide what a team's match has.
From there, looking at Vietnamese football, the World Cup dream is still talked about by many people with a feeling that it seems very close, especially when there are naturalized factors whose physique meets standards such as Xuan Son, Hoang Hen. But reality is always very different, even harsh when pointing out that Vietnamese football still lacks too much.
There are Xuan Son and Hoang Hen, but they are all around 30 years old, so while it is difficult to improve the physique of domestic players in the next decade, sometimes 2 naturalized stars retire and still haven't seen a World Cup ticket anywhere.
President Gianni Infantino said FIFA may increase the number of teams participating in the World Cup to 68, or even 208, as a joke about the possibility of the Italian national team returning to the World Cup. Just a joke, but for Vietnamese football, if the question "how" cannot be answered, then the possibility also depends on that to reach the World Cup.
But in fact, "how to" is also very general. To solve "how to", there must be answers to 2 very specific questions about "what" and "why"...
