‘Either 32 or 48 teams, Vietnam is unlikely to be joined World Cup’

Recently, FIFA opened up the final decision about the number of participants attending 2022 World Cup Qualifications. Regardless of the representative sides’ offer to raise the number of participants, FIFA decided to hold on the quantity of 38 teams.

As a result, Asia will only make up 4,5 slots instead of 8,5 as Vietnam NT’s expectation.

Considering an opportunity of Park Hang-seo’s side ahead of 2022 World Cup Qualifications, Le Thuy Hai showed his opinion:

“I think whether 32 teams or 48 teams, it’s very difficult for Vietnam. I know when sharing about that, some people won’t like it but this is a view from the fact about our qualifications compared to other continental teams.

We can see from the fact that if there are 32 teams, how many slots does Asia have? It’s only 4,5. So Is Vietnam better than and inferior to which teams to step into World Cup race? I think it's too difficult.”

At this moment, Vietnam NT ranks 16th on Asia table and 98th on FIFA table. If Vietnam wants to have an attending slot in World Cup journey, the squad needs to finish nicely the Asia zonal qualifications by making to the top 4 strongest squads or at least top 6.

Members of those lists are such qualified names who are overpowered to Vietnam NT namely Japan, South Korea, Iran, Australia, Iraq, and Uzbekistan.

World Cup door is almost closing to Vietnam if there will be just 32 slots.

“I really hope Vietnam could be a part of World Cup’s participants like anyone else does. However, we need to have long-term plans. We can't call upon to join World Cup even if the level is not equal to the strongest continental teams. Wanting to attend World Cup, we must be the strongest squad of Southeast Asia, then step into the Top of the potential teams. We are very hard to do this at this time.”

Vietnam NT is set to enter a series of King's Cup 2019 friendly games. If Vietnam side ends up Thailand and India (or Curacao) by good outcomes, the team will get an advantage ahead of the Draw Group stage of the 2022 World Cup Asia zonal 2nd Qualifications slated for this September.