Vietnam U20 women's team reunites with Thailand, in the softest group of the Asian finals

Before the draw, the U20 women's team was only in group 3 because the AFC divided the seed groups based on the position of football nations on the FIFA rankings. Thailand was the only exception because they were the host. Opponents such as Japan, South Korea or North Korea were in the higher groups, making the U20 women's team face the risk of falling into the group of death.

However, the draw results brought the most comfortable scenario for U20 women in Vietnam. The team that avoided North Korea and Japan, the current champion and runner-up of the U20 women's Asian Cup, was in the same group as Thailand, the remaining name in group 1. The representative of group 2 in the same group as Vietnam is China and group 4 is Bangladesh.

U20 Vietnam will meet U20 Thailand again in the AFC U20 Women's Championship

Thus, Group A of the AFC U20 Women's Championship will include Vietnam, China, Thailand and Bangladesh. This is the easiest group compared to the other two groups including North Korea, South Korea, Uzbekistan, Jordan (B) and Japan, Australia, Chinese Taipei and India (C).

In Group A, the leading position is unlikely to slip away from China, the 2026 Asian U20 Women's Champion. Vietnam U20 Women's and Thailand U20 Women's will likely compete for the second place. Meanwhile, Bangladesh U20 Women's, in their first participation, will probably be considered the underdog.

According to the format, the 12 teams participating in the 2026 AFC U20 Women's Championship will be divided into 3 groups of 4 teams each. The teams will compete in a round robin to select the top 2 teams to go straight to the quarter-finals. The 2 third-placed teams with the best results in each group will also have a ticket to the quarter-finals.

Here, 8 teams will compete in a knockout round to select 4 names to enter the semi-finals, then the final. 4 teams participating in the semi-finals will represent Asia to participate in the 2026 FIFA U-20 Women's World Cup in Poland, taking place from September 5 to 27 next year.