On the evening of January 5, the Vietnamese men’s national football team defeated its Thai competitor at Thailand’s Rajamangala cauldron to claim the Southeast Asian football championship for the third time. While Thailand and Singapore have generally enjoyed greater success at the biennial championship, the statistics of Vietnam’s victory this year were striking.
It became the first team to defeat Thailand in both legs of the final, and the first team to stop both Singapore and Thailand (twice) from setting a record of three consecutive championships. Along with Singapore, Vietnam is one of only two teams that have been able to defeat Thailand in the finals of the tournament. It is also the first team in the tournament’s 29-year history to achieve seven wins and no losses in a single tournament and the first to claim three individual awards, including the tournament’s best player, highest scorer, and best goalkeeper. Vietnam is now ranked the top team in Southeast Asia.
Vietnam’s government is no doubt hoping that the country’s football successes will be reflected in its economic development and stature in the Southeast Asian region more broadly.
In 1986, when the Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV) launched the economic reform program known as Doi Moi, Vietnam was still known as a byword for war. The nation had to struggle with the aftermath of war, poverty, backwardness, hyperinflation, embargo and isolation by the United States, Western countries, and China. Vietnam’s exhausted economy languished at the bottom of the global rankings, and direct investment from Western countries was virtually zero. The only Western funds flowing into Vietnam came from a few countries, including Australia, and international institutions like the United Nations, and was intended for humanitarian aid programs rather than commercial investment. Vietnamese society fell into a severe and comprehensive crisis. People’s trust in the CPV declined deeply, threatening its legitimacy.
In the four decades since the beginning of the economic reforms, Vietnam has been transformed. The reforms brought nearly immediate results and integrated Vietnam into the world economy. The country has recorded successive economic growth rates of 4.4 percent (1986-1990), 8.5 percent (1991-1995), 7 percent (1996-2000), 7.5 percent (2001-2005), 7 percent (2006-2010), and an average of 5-6 percent since 2011. In 2024, Vietnam’s economy grew by 7.09 percent; the country attracted a record $40 billion in registered foreign investment capital, and topped $800 billion in trade turnover. Vietnam’s economy has ranked fourth in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) since 2020, and is currently 15th in Asia and 33rd in the world. It has been among Asia’s and the world’s fastest-growing economies, despite the impacts of various global crises.
At the same time, Vietnam has become one of the most liberalized economies in the region. In addition to its membership in the World Trade Organization, it has signed 17 free trade agreements, including major multilateral agreements such as the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, and the EU-Vietnam Free Trade Agreement. Vietnam is one of the active participants in negotiations for an Indo-Pacific Economic Framework initiated by the U.S. Vietnam’s diplomatic relations with other countries have increased from about 44 countries in 1986 to 193 at present, of which nine countries – China, Russia, India, South Korea, the U.S., Japan, France, Australia, and Malaysia – are comprehensive strategic partners.
As its economy has grown, Vietnam has come to occupy an important link in the global supply chain. It is competing with other ASEAN nations like Indonesia and Malaysia in attracting investment from leading technology companies like Intel, Apple, and Nvidia, who are working to transform the nation into a hub of semiconductor and AI technology production in the region. Vietnam is ambitiously set to establish two regional and international financial centers and is constructing one of the largest airports in the world. Vietnam has also become a new preferred destination for U.S. investors arising from the trend of decoupling and derisking from China due to U.S.-China tensions.
Since joining ASEAN in 1995, Vietnam has served as chair of the organization three times and emerged as an important voice in the regional bloc. It has taken a leading role in regional and Mekong sub-regional issues and made constructive contributions to strengthening the bloc’s internal unity, expanding its cooperation with external partners, and reinforcing ASEAN’s centrality and voice in regional and global issues. Vietnam is not only a claimant but also a key member in maintaining the bloc’s uniting stance on the South China Sea disputes.
Despite this remarkable development since the beginning of Doi Moi, institutional bottlenecks, ideological tightropes, and other limitations on the unleashing of human potential, have caused Vietnam to develop more slowly compared to other Southeast Asian nations with more limited resources, shortcomings that new CPV General Secretary To Lam has pledged to address.
The Vietnamese national football team couldn’t have won the crown without courage, even enduring injuries, the pressure of nationalist expectations, and constant reforms to their playing style. The CPV leadership has set an ambitious goal to lead Vietnam into an “era of nation’s rise” and become a developed and high-income country by 2045. However, just like in football, to maintain and uplift its “stature, potential, position, and international prestige,” as Lam has promised to do, Vietnam needs to loosen its ideological ropes, unleash human creativity, and implement strong institutional reforms. Only then can Vietnam hope to match the achievements of its footballing champions.