This is the first time the Vietnamese football team has qualified for the finals since 2007.

Vietnam has secured a place in the finals of the AFC Asian Cup for the first time since 2007 after sharing
a goalless draw with Afghanistan on Tuesday at My Dinh Stadium in Hanoi.

The AFC Asian Cup is an international football tournament run by the Asian Football Confederation
(AFC). It is the second oldest continental football championship in the world after the Copa Amrica. The
winning team qualifies for the FIFA Confederations Cup.

Afghanistan needed to beat Vietnam to make it to the finals, scheduled for January, 2019 in the United
Arab Emirates (UAE), but failed to break the deadlock.

20 of the 24 teams that will be competing at the finals have already been decided, with Vietnam and
Thailand the only Southeast Asian representatives.

The other 18 are the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Iran, Uzbekistan, Iraq, Syria, Australia, Japan, South
Korea, China, Libya, Palestine, Oman, Turkmenistan, Jordan, Bahrain and India.

Vietnam surprised football fans by making it to the quarterfinals of the Asian Cup in 2007, the first year
the country had ever made it to the finals of the tournament.