Two national football teams then existed when Vietnam was divided into 2 countries which were South Vietnam and North Vietnam. The team from the South participated in the first two AFC Asian Cup finals (1956 AFC Asian Cup and 1960 AFC Asian Cup) and finished in fourth place both times. They won the first Southeast Asian Games gold in 1959 in Thailand. The team also entered qualification for the 1974 FIFA World Cup, beating Thailand 1–0 to qualify the classification matches before losing their group opening matches by 0–4 to Japan and 0–1 to Hong Kong. The team played their last game against Malaysia in 1975 where they lost 0–3. Meanwhile, the team from the North was less active, not being a member of either AFC and FIFA, often playing against other communist states between 1956 and 1966. They had their first match against China PR where they lost 3–5 under head coach Truong Tan Buu. They participated in the first GANEFO (Games of the New Emerging Forces) competitions at Indonesia in 1962 and Cambodia in 1966. Both teams ceased to exist when the North and South regions were combined together into the Socialist Republic of Vietnam following the end of the Vietnam War, but North Vietnam did not become a member of AFC and FIFA until 1976. Because both of them were a member of FIFA (South as 1954 and North as 1964), the later unified Vietnam team is classified as the successor of the both by FIFA.