This hidden "group of death" is Group G: UAE, Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia! In fact, during the lucky draw, we can also hear the participants' expectations of this group through live radio broadcast. There was a commotion at the meeting between Malaysia and Indonesia, two neighboring countries. When Thailand joined the war, more decibels of cheers came. Subsequently, Vietnam, which is also Southeast Asia, was drawn into Group G, and finally the first team, the United Arab Emirates, was seated, with 4 dragons 1 southeast of West Asian Tiger PK. Such a lottery script really existed.
First of all, the UAE ranks 67th in the world, 96th in Vietnam, Thailand 1 16, Malaysia 159 and Indonesia 160. Of course, ranking is not equal to the real strength of the team. Based on the current competitive state and development level of their national teams, this group, especially Vietnam, Thailand and Malaysia, have invested heavily in football in recent years and made remarkable progress. In this year's Asian Cup, Vietnam even broke into the quarter-finals, tying the best record in the team's history, and in last year's U23 Asian Cup, Vietnam even reached the final! Let's start with the World Cup preliminaries between Thailand and Russia. They are the only seeds of Southeast Asian football in the 12 match. In recent years, Thai football is being integrated nationwide, and the technical and tactical systems at all levels are unified, which also makes Thai football seamlessly connect from youth teams to adult teams.
As for Malaysia, they launched the "National Football Rise Plan" on 20 14, which promoted the "Football Youth Training" to an important strategic position of the country. Soon, Malaysia's youth training continued to produce results. The only shortcoming of this group is Indonesia, whose football development is the slowest. As the first echelon, UAE has risen rapidly in recent years. At last year's AFC annual awards ceremony, they won the most inspiring league award, and Mubarak was also selected as one of the top ten stars in the Asian Cup. Through the investment of domestic rich people in European football clubs such as Britain and Spain, the advanced football concepts and technologies of these countries are introduced into the United Arab Emirates, and football schools are set up to continue to expand the territory of UAE football youth training. Today's Qatar is actually a football template for the United Arab Emirates in a few days.