The Việt Nam’s national futsal team are ready for the 2020 AFC Futsal Championship finals. Photo vff.org.vn

Futsal

HÀ NỘI  Việt Nam’s national futsal team are ready for the 2020 AFC Futsal Championship finals to be held in Turkmenistan between February 26 and March 8.

Head coach Phạm Minh Giang announced on Saturday the 20-man squad for the tournament.

Key players in the Vietnamese futsal team's run to a third-place finish in the Futsal HDBank Championship Southeast Asia 2019 have made the squad, including Trần Văn Vũ, Phạm Đức Hòa, Tôn Thất Phi, Lê Quốc Nam, Khổng Đình Hùng, Vũ Quốc Hưng and Hồ Văn Ý.

The coach also called up young guns Nguyễn Văn Hiếu of Đà Nẵng and Nguyễn Huỳnh Thanh Huy of Cao Bằng.

Hiếu was top scorer of the National Futsal Championship 2018, while Huy has risen from his place in the Việt Nam U20 futsal team.

Two key players Nguyễn Minh Trí and Trần Thái Huy, who play for Y.S.C.C. Yokohama FS in the Japanese second division futsal league, will return to the national squad on January 15.

The team convened in HCM City on Monday and are training at the Thái Sơn Nam Gymnasium. They will leave for Spain on February 9.

In Europe, they will have three friendly matches before heading to Turkmenistan on February 21 to compete in the 2020 AFC Futsal Championship finals.

The event will feature 16 teams from across the continent. Việt Nam are in Group A with the hosts, Tajikistan and Oman.

Teams will compete in a round-robin format in the group stage to select the top two teams in each group to advance to the quarter-finals, in which the four winners will qualify for 2020 FIFA Futsal World Cup, while four losers will enter fifth place play-offs to decide the last ticket for AFC members to the World Cup.

The Vietnamese team, who finished fourth in the 2016 tournament, aim to progress to the knockout stage and earn a slot among the top five teams to qualify for World Cup in Lithuania.

Việt Nam will start their campaign with the opening match against Tajikistan on February 26, before encountering Oman two days later and wrapping up the group stage against the hosts Turkmenistan on March 1.

In the AFC Futsal Championship four years ago, Việt Nam made a shock by beating Japan in the quarter-finals to earn a ticket to compete in the FIFA Futsal World Cup 2017. It was the first time in history a Vietnamese national football team secured a place at the World Cup. VNS