Vietnam U17 Training Toward the 2026 World Cup: A 29-Player Pool, Group G, and What Has Not Yet Surfaced

Late afternoon at the youth football training centre, a ball is placed on the line. No crowd, no loudspeaker. The young goalkeeper turns his back to me, both gloves hanging loose, eyes fixed on the space ahead as if measuring the goal before anyone shoots. I stand a few dozen metres away, hearing the studs bite the grass, hearing his breath shorten just before he throws himself.

An empty stadium means a bigger goal, and the goalkeeper stands there as the one keeping time for himself.

I have followed teams this way for more than twenty years, from sessions nobody films to dressing rooms that go quiet after a defeat. There are training sessions nobody records, but I keep them in my ear – the sound of studs on grass, the repetition steady as a heartbeat. With Vietnam U17 at this stage, what I hear is not the noise of a media campaign. It is a group of teenagers trying to prove they belong on the final list.

Vietnam U17 are entering a preparation cycle for the 2026 U17 World Cup. The berth came from the AFC U17 Asian Cup in May, and according to team information, Cristiano Roland continues as head coach of this group. The current call-up list holds 29 names, with the coaching staff retaining the spine that played at the Asian Cup, including players regarded as mainstays and a goalkeeper likely to start.

The schedule runs in phases: an initial period at Vietnam's youth football training centre lasting until October, then a camp in West Asia, then relocation to Qatar before the tournament. In the group stage, Vietnam U17 sit in Group G with Mali, Belgium and New Zealand.

Such information is usually read positively: there is a plan, there is a long camp, there is a retained spine. But I have been in this trade long enough to know that a good schedule says nothing about the quality of a team. What it says is how much is being invested, and how much expectation is being loaded onto players who are seventeen.

A 29-player list is not a team, it is a draft with an expiry date. A tournament squad is usually settled at around 20 to 23. The number 29 means something else: this is a screening phase, where places are open and every session is a vote. When a young player is described as working hard in every play to score points with the staff, behind that sentence sits real internal competition, and real anxiety.

The second signal is selection philosophy. Retaining the Asian Cup core shows a preference for stability over a rebuild. In a short tournament, cohesion is worth more than theoretical experimentation. The three names most often mentioned – Van Duong, Chu Ngoc Nguyen Luc and goalkeeper Ly Xuan Hoa – form a fairly clear vertical spine: an attacking reference, a midfield figure, and a rhythm-keeper in goal.

Based on my experience covering matches, a clear spine at this age group matters far more than one standout individual. Seventeen-year-olds do not lack technique; they lack calm when a match escapes the script. The person who keeps the rhythm in those minutes is usually not the scorer.

The camp route also needs to be read correctly. Moving from Vietnam to West Asia and then Qatar is not a showcase tour. It is a question of climate, time zones, pitch surfaces and the feel of the ball in dry air. For young players, physical adaptation and psychological adaptation are two different tasks, and a long camp only solves half of it.

The other half lies in data, and this is the biggest gap in the current picture. At national U17 level, metrics such as expected goals, key passes or passes allowed per defensive action are rarely published. Without match data, no tactical system can be assessed, no comparison with Mali or Belgium can be made, and no claim about readiness can be verified. The only defensible statement is that the team is in a preparation cycle, not in a settled tactical plan.

Looking at Group G, the paper order is fairly clear. Mali are one of Africa's strongest youth talent exporters. Belgium represent the organised European academy model. New Zealand are the most evenly matched opponent, and the realistic source of points. Group G is not hard because of names, it is hard because of structure: an exporting football nation, an organised football nation, and a peer opponent in the middle.

There is another structural factor rarely mentioned. The expansion of the U17 World Cup has widened the door for Asian and Southeast Asian nations. That is a systemic advantage, not an individual achievement. It also means the berth is no longer strong proof of level, only the necessary condition for testing it.

The familiar blind spot for Vietnamese youth football is physicality. Southeast Asian youth sides generally lose ground in aerial duels and in the second half of high-intensity matches. No camp fixes that in a few months. What can be fixed is the way the team plays: fewer unnecessary duels, tighter distances between lines, and set pieces turned into genuine chances.

Then there is the world beyond the pitch. A U17 World Cup is a shop window. For players such as Van Duong, Chu Ngoc Nguyen Luc or Ly Xuan Hoa, a few good matches can draw attention from foreign academies. This is the paradox: success for this cohort on the world stage is also the shortest path to their leaving the domestic system earlier.

That is why I do not read this through the question of how far the team can go. The more interesting question sits in the final squad. Cutting from 29 to about twenty will reveal more than any statement of objectives. Who is left out, which positions are kept deep, which player is tried in a new role – those are the real signals, and they arrive before the ball rolls.

I once spent an entire afternoon watching a goalkeeper practise saves alone in an empty stadium, and wrote about the loneliness of the position rather than a piece of criticism. Something similar is happening with Vietnam U17 now. The unrecorded sessions, the unwatched squad cuts, the long flights to West Asia and Qatar – that is where the match is being prepared.

In an empty stand, I learned that football does not need roaring, it needs someone calm enough to hear the goalkeeper sigh. At this stage of a U17 team, that calm person should be us, waiting to turn a berth into belief. The question is not how far Vietnam U17 will go in Group G, but how many of those 29 names will still be inside Vietnamese football after the tournament ends.