India And Vietnam Set To Renew Historic Rivalry

The story of India and Vietnam's football rivalry goes long back. Between the 1950s and 1970s, India played several tight matches against the erstwhile South Vietnam national team in multiple Merdeka Cups and Asian Games tournaments. But meetings have been rare in the 21st century, and Saturday's match in Nam Dinh will only be the fourth time India will face unified Vietnam in senior internationals. All the previous three were also friendly matches. In 2004, Vietnam nicked a 2-1 win in the LG Cup in Ho Chi Minh City.

In 2010, a Sunil Chhetri hat-trick powered India to a 3-1 friendly win in Pune. The most recent fixture came in 2022 in Ho Chi Minh City when the hosts won 3-0 in the Hung Thinh Friendly Tournament.

The current Vietnam squad has 13 players who featured two years ago, including two goalscorers Nguyen Van Toan and Nguyen Van Quyet. 10 among India's 23 made the trip to the south-east Asian nation in 2022 - Gurpreet Singh Sandhu, Anwar Ali, Jeakson Singh Thounaojam, Chinglensana Singh Konsham, Lallianzuala Chhangte, Brandon Fernandes, Liston Colaco, Vikram Partap Singh, Amrinder Singh and Naorem Roshan Singh.

In many ways, the current situation of Vietnam and India is similar. Both are in a rebuilding phase under a new head coach after their exit from the second round of the FIFA World Cup qualifiers. While India missed out by two points behind Kuwait, Vietnam finished Group F behind Iraq and Indonesia.

Vietnam, ranked 10 places above India at 116th, appointed former South Korea international Kim Sang-sik as the head coach in June, with whom they have a victory against Philippines and three defeats so far. In the September window, they lost both matches against Russia (0-3) and Thailand (1-2) in the LPBank Cup