Coach Philippe Troussier leads the Vietnam U23 team to participate in the 2024 U23 Asian qualifiers. (Source: VFF)

Compared to the U23 Vietnam team participating in the 2023 Southeast Asian U23 tournament, coach Philippe Troussier's U23 team has a different goal and is considered to be "better". However, the list of the U23 Vietnam team just announced by the French coach surprised many people.

Specifically, in the list of 22 players called up in the first training phase, the vast majority are new faces wearing the U23 Vietnam jersey for the first time.

Coach Philippe Troussier gives maximum opportunities to all the players he considers to have potential. They are all very young and mainly play for clubs in the national First and Second Divisions.

However, in the first training phase, coach Philippe Troussier focused mainly on reviewing and evaluating the performance and integration ability of the summoned players.

This also means that the current list of U23 Vietnam will have many changes.

In particular, after the 2023 V-League ends and the U23 Vietnam team led by coach Hoang Anh Tuan returns from the 2023 Southeast Asian U23 Championship in Thailand, the best players of the U23 Vietnam team will be added to the squad to participate in the 2024 Asian U23 qualifiers.

As planned, Group C of the 2024 AFC U23 Championship qualifiers hosted by Vietnam will take place from September 6-12 at Viet Tri Stadium (Phu Tho) with the participation of 4 teams: U23 Singapore, U23 Guam, U23 Yemen and host U23 Vietnam.

The teams compete in a round-robin format, selecting a first-place team and competing for one of the four second-place positions in the remaining 10 groups with the best results to participate in the final round with host U23 Qatar.

According to the schedule, U23 Vietnam will have their opening match against U23 Guam on September 6, U23 Yemen on September 9 and U23 Singapore on September 12.

List of players training to prepare for the 2024 AFC U23 qualifiers. (Source: VFF)