National women’s football team set for January training camp
VOV.VN - The Vietnamese national women’s football team are scheduled to begin their upcoming training camp from January 6, 2021, in preparation for important international fixtures which will be taking place next year, including qualification games for the 2023 World Cup.
The series of training sessions are due to last for one month and will finish ahead of the annual Lunar New Year Festival, known locally as Tet, according to the Vietnam Football Federation (VFF).
Looking ahead to 2021, the women’s football team are about to compete in the ASEAN Football Federation (AFF) Women's Championship, in addition to the 31st Southeast Asian (SEA) Games.
Most notably, the women’s national squad will participate in qualification matches for the the 2022 Asian Football Confederation (AFC) Women’s Asian Cup. This tournament will also serve as the first round of matches in the Asian qualifiers for the 2023 FIFA Women's World Cup.
This comes following FIFA announcing on August 1 that the number of teams taking part in the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup will increase from 24 to 32.
In line with FIFA’s decision, the Women’s World Cup will therefore be expanded from 2023. In the new format, national teams from Asia will compete for 8.5 slots as opposed to the previous five slots as before.
It therefore provides a good chance for the Vietnamese team following two failures in both 2015 and 2019.