Southeast Asian youth football is exhausted in the big sea.

Indonesian and Thai football have made careful investments for the U.20 team to compete in the 2025 AFC U.20 Championship (taking place in China, from February 12 to March 1), with the goal of participating in the U.20 World Cup. Because this tournament is also the qualifying round for the U.20 World Cup 2025. The two Southeast Asian representatives are in a very difficult group, with the participation of opponents from football backgrounds with excellent youth training. U.20 Indonesia will face Iran, Uzbekistan, and Yemen, while U.20 Thailand will be in the same group with Japan, South Korea, and Syria.

Southeast Asian football is clean at the 2025 U.20 Asian tournament

After only the first two matches of the group stage, both U.20 Indonesia and U.20 Thailand have stopped. The team from the archipelago lost to U.20 Iran 0-3, U.20 Uzbekistan 1-3. The "War Elephants" suffered a 0-3 defeat to U.20 Japan and 1-4 to U.20 Korea. It can be seen that the U.20 generation of the top Asian teams is completely superior in terms of class compared to the two representatives of the Southeast Asian region.

A clear proof of this is the most recent match between U.20 Thailand and U.20 Korea yesterday afternoon (February 17). Although the team from the land of the golden pagoda took a 1-0 lead, they ultimately had to accept a 1-4 defeat. Those who watched the match from the beginning could easily predict that U.20 Thailand had absolutely no chance of winning against U.20 Korea. The opening goal of the "War Elephants" came as an accident of the opponent because U.20 Korea was absolutely overwhelming. U.20 Thailand even defended tightly to protect the result, but U.20 Korea only needed to accelerate to score. At all levels, Southeast Asian football wants to be steady when swimming out to the open sea, not getting exhausted, perhaps it must do better in youth training.

Since the World Youth Cup was officially renamed the U.20 World Cup in 2007, Southeast Asia has only had two representatives competing, U.20 Myanmar (2015) and U.20 Vietnam (2017).

Source: https://thanhnien.vn/bong-da-tre-dong-nam-a-duoi-suc-o-bien-lon-185250217215739922.htm