Vietnam team after the friendly match with the Korean team. (Source: VFF)

On its homepage, AFC wrote: "The Vietnam team aims to surpass their previous best performance at the Asian Football Championship. Vietnam reached the quarterfinals in 2007 and 2019."

AFC added: "At the 2023 Asian Cup in Qatar, the Vietnamese team is in Group D with Japan (4-time cup winners), Iraq (2007 champions) and Indonesia."

Group D of the Vietnam team is considered a pretty tough group. In this group, Japan is currently the number one team in Asia, based on the FIFA rankings (Japan is ranked 18th in the world, the highest in Asia).

Meanwhile, Iraq is ranked 68th in FIFA. This team is often a big challenge for the Vietnamese team. Another notable thing is that the Vietnamese team has a lot of fate with the opponents in Group D.

AFC shared: "The Vietnamese team lost to Japan twice at the Asian Cup, with the scores 1-4 (in 2007) and 0-1 (in 2019). Vietnam also lost to Iraq twice at the Asian tournament, with the scores 0-2 (in 2007) and 2-3 (in 2019)".

"However, in their last 3 matches at the Asian Cup finals, the Vietnamese team only lost one match (the 0-1 loss to Japan in the quarter-finals of the 2019 Asian Cup)," the Asian Football Confederation's homepage praised the Vietnamese team.

In addition, AFC also praised another character in the current squad of coach Philippe Troussier's team, goalkeeper Dang Van Lam.

AFC said: "At the 2019 Asian Cup, the Vietnamese team had to endure 23 shots on target from their opponents. This number is only lower than the 25 shots that Turkmenistan had to endure and the 24 shots that Uzbekistan had to face at the same tournament."

"Also at the 2019 Asian Cup, goalkeeper Dang Van Lam of the Vietnamese team had 16 saves, ranking 3rd in that year's tournament in terms of the number of saves for his team," are still the lines written on the homepage of the Asian Football Confederation.