World Cup qualifiers: Vietnam scores best fair-play points among Southeast Asian teams

A recent exceptional showing in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) has sent Park Hang-seo’s troops through to the final round of the World Cup qualifying campaign for the first time in history.

In addition to being the only Southeast Asian side to do so, the Golden Star Warriors also led the region with the fewest number of fair-play points.

Specifically, Vietnamese players were shown just nine yellow cards in eight games, an average of one card per match. In fact, there were up to four clashes in which Que Ngoc Hai and teammates did not concede a single card, namely with Thailand on September 5, 2019, Indonesia on October 15, 2019, the UAE on November 14, 2019, and Malaysia on June 11, 2021.

As calculated by the Asian Football Confederation (AFC), the following deductions were made for yellow and red cards in all group matches: minus one point for a first yellow card, minus three points for a second yellow card/indirect red card, minus four points for a direct red card, and minus five points for a yellow card and direct red card.

The fair play ranking of Southeast Asian teams in the second round of the 2022 World Cup Asian Qualifiers.

Based on these calculations, Vietnam got the final fair-play point of -9, the best in Southeast Asia, followed by Thailand (-11, 11 yellow cards), the Philippines (-11, 11 yellow cards), Indonesia (-13, 13 yellow cards), Cambodia (-14, 11 yellow cards and one red card), Singapore (-14, 14 yellow cards), Malaysia (-20, 20 yellow cards), and Myanmar (-21, 14 yellow cards, one indirect red card, and one direct red card).

Earlier, Vietnam also surpassed Thailand to set a new points record among Southeast Asian teams at the World Cup qualifiers after concluding their Group G campaign with 17 points.