5 teams withdraw simultaneously, national U.21 football tournament shuffles the tournament table

Many reasons for withdrawal

The U.21 tournament coincided with the time when the Vietnam U.23 team gathered, so the playground for the next generation of Vietnamese football received much attention from the public.

Among the 5 teams that withdrew from the qualifying round of the 2025 National U.21 Football Tournament, U.21 Lam Dong attracted attention. Lam Dong is one of the localities that was eager to host a group from the beginning. In fact, U.21 was assigned by VFF to be the leader of group D, including Lam Dong, Binh Dinh, Dak Lak , Quang Nam, and HAGL 2.

However, in the past two weeks, Lam Dong football seems to have "changed". First, the second division team, which was impressively leading and had a 95% chance of being promoted to the first division, suddenly lost its form in an inexplicable way in the last two rounds and let the opportunity slip away.

5 đội đồng loạt rút lui, giải bóng đá U.21 quốc gia xáo trộn bảng đấu- Ảnh 1. — National U.21 tournament qualifiers start from July 4

This has greatly affected the mentality of the reserve force, losing the motivation to participate in the U.21 tournament and also losing interest in hosting a group. The withdrawal of Lam Dong team from being the group leader and not competing has forced VFF to shuffle and divide the teams in group D to other groups in the south.

The withdrawal of Binh Phuoc and Tay Ninh both have their reasons. These are two teams that have regularly participated in the U-League tournaments organized by VFF in recent times and both have a fairly stable source of local training, always playing with strong spirit and enthusiasm. However, after Binh Phuoc merged with Dong Nai and Tay Ninh merged with Long An under the new local government structure, it was impossible to continue to pour state funds into youth football for two teams in the same province. Therefore, both Binh Phuoc and Tay Ninh proactively withdrew to make way for Dong Nai and Long An to participate.

5 đội đồng loạt rút lui, giải bóng đá U.21 quốc gia xáo trộn bảng đấu- Ảnh 2. — U.21 qualifiers are a challenging opportunity for young players

U.21 Khanh Hoa is also in a similar situation even though they are capable of competing in the qualifying round in Ho Chi Minh City. Like the U.15 team currently playing at Thong Nhat Stadium. But the U.21 Khanh Hoa team has partly "lost its fire" due to the influence of the first team's unconvincing performance in the first division. On the other hand, after several scandals about the coach "embezzling" player money recently, Khanh Hoa youth football is likely to reorganize to consider the future, so the motivation for them to compete in the U.21 tournament is no longer there.

In the case of Concrete 26 Gia Lai, although they really wanted to participate for the first time in the U.21 tournament, because they did not have the required documents, VFF did not approve their participation.

Ho Chi Minh City has 2 U.21 teams and 2 stadiums to host the upcoming exciting tournament.

With the withdrawal of 5 teams, the 2025 national U.21 qualifying round from the original 28 registered teams has only 23 teams left and from 6 groups, VFF has reduced it to only 5 groups (there are 3 groups of 5 teams and 2 groups of 4 teams). The competition format remains the same as a round-robin and will select the 10 first and second teams of the 5 groups and the 3rd place team with the best results in the 5 groups to go straight to the final round. In case the host team of the final round is among these 11 teams, the 12th place will be awarded to the team with the 2nd best result among the 3rd place teams of the 5 groups.

5 đội đồng loạt rút lui, giải bóng đá U.21 quốc gia xáo trộn bảng đấu- Ảnh 3. — U.21 Thong Nhat Sports Center, Ho Chi Minh City is having good preparation for the U.21 qualifying round.

Of the 5 groups hosting the qualifying round, Viettel (Group A), PVF (Group B), HAGL (Group C), the remaining 2 groups are hosted by Ho Chi Minh City. Specifically, Group D will compete at Thanh Long Stadium while Group E will compete at Long Tam Stadium (Ba Ria), now also in Ho Chi Minh City. That is why the Ba Ria-Vung Tau team has requested to change its name to Ho Chi Minh City U.21 team to compete in Group E. The other Ho Chi Minh City team that has been present from the beginning, led by Coach Lu Dinh Tuan, is the Thong Nhat Sports Center team competing in Group D.

List of 5 specific competition groups: Group A (competing at Viettel, 4 teams) has The Cong Viettel, Hanoi, Hoai Duc, PVF CAND. Group B (competing at PVF, 5 teams): PVF, SLNA, Thanh Hoa, Hanoi Police, Dao Ha Center. Group C (competing at Pleiku, 4 teams): HAGL 1, Quang Nam, Hue and Da Nang. Group D (competing at Thanh Long Stadium, Ho Chi Minh City, 5 teams) has Thong Nhat Sports Center, An Giang, Dong Thap, Binh Dinh and Vinh Long. Group F (competing at Ba Ria, Ho Chi Minh City has 5 teams): Ho Chi Minh City, HAGL 2, Dong Nai, Dak Lak and Long An.