According to the latest update from FIFA, the Vietnamese women's football team is ranked 37th in the world, 6th in Asia, and number 1 in Southeast Asia (1,614.43 points). The number 1 position in Southeast Asia has been affirmed in recent years and, as usual, that is good news at the end of the year for Vietnamese football and its fans. However, this year is a slightly different feeling.
That comes from the fact that the team has been almost inactive all year. There are no international tournaments, only 1 training session and 2 friendly matches - 1 win, 1 loss - adding 3.13 points. With such a number of matches, the Vietnamese Women's Team maintains the No. 1 position in the region partly because of the accumulated points from before, partly because the opponents do not have very good results.
But the problem is that the number of matches played by the opponents is much greater than that of coach Mai Duc Chung and his team. Not only that, they also met strong opponents, with many important lessons learned. For example, the Philippines Women's Team, although they lost 6/7 matches in 2024, they met teams from Europe (Finland, Scotland, Slovenia) or strong teams in Asia like Korea (2 matches).
The Thai women's team also had 5 matches, although they only won 1 (1 draw, 3 losses), but their opponents were New Zealand (2), Venezuela, Mexico. Notably, the Indonesian women's team played 10 matches and won 6 of them. Of course, winning against teams like Singapore, Bahrain (both 2 times), Malaysia or Cambodia is not significant, especially when losing to the Netherlands women's team 0-15, but please note that the Indonesian women's team is also promoting the strategy of naturalizing players like the men's team.
The Philippine women's team has been following this strategy for a long time and is creating great competition, while Madam Pang - President of the Football Association of Thailand, is also implementing the "Road to Brazil 2027" (World Cup) campaign with a plan to select naturalized players.
Vietnam team is in the process of rejuvenating its force, without a reasonable plan and roadmap, it will face great pressure.
