Japan were on the front foot from the first blow of the referee's whistle and their early pressure saw Yuta Nakayama putting the 2016 AFC U23 Championship winners side ahead in the fifth minute.

The tournament kicks off on January 8 and will act as the qualifying campaign for the Tokyo Olympics, with the top three sides to book their tickets to the Games this summer, which will be the first to be staged in Asia since Beijing 2008.

But while Japan’s place is already secured as hosts, Moriyasu believes that the AFC U23 Championship provides the perfect platform for the future and one which could help fill his side with belief should they repeat their feat of 2016 by claiming the title.

At a snow-clad Changzhou Olympic Sports Centre, Nguyen Quang Hai curled home a stunning free-kick to draw Vietnam level with Uzbekistan in the final with what would later become renowned in the Southeast Asian nation as the ‘Rainbow in the Snow’.

While the young Golden Stars went on to lose the match 2-1 after a goal in the last minute of extra-time, the campaign saw both Quang Hai and a talented young Vietnamese team gain recognition across the Continent and began a two-year period in which they have achieved success after success.

Now, with the 2020 edition set to kick off in Thailand on January 6, Park Hang-seo’s team will begin the competition among the favourites to lift the title and also qualify for the Tokyo Olympics as one of the top three sides.

The quartet will go into the campaign on the back of a strong 2019 and, in what is likely to be a closely contested group, their countries' hopes of progressing to the knockout rounds of the AFC U23 Championship Thailand 2020 could rest upon their form in front of goal in Southeast Asia.

The 64-year-old has one of the most illustrious resumes in Asian football, having broken his home nation’s Olympic qualification drought in 1996, won the AFC Champions League with Gamba Osaka in 2008 and led the Samurai Blue to the knockout rounds at the 2018 FIFA World Cup.

Now, six months after being appointed head coach of Thailand’s U23 and senior national sides, Nishino enters the Finals of his first continental competition leading his new charges knowing the odds are stacked against him.

The selection features six players from their title-winning 2018 squad, and seven who have been capped at senior level, with Khojiakbar Alijonov and Sanjar Kodirkulov part of Vadim Abramov’s most recent Asian Qualifiers squad in November.

The Lions of Mesopotamia have a proud record in the AFC U23 Championship, winning the inaugural edition – when it was the AFC U-22 Championship – in Oman before finishing third in Qatar two years later to book their ticket to the Rio de Janeiro Olympics.

While they exited at the group stage in Brazil, the West Asians were unbeaten and secured an excellent scoreless draw with the hosts, who eventually won the competition.

Twelve years earlier in Athens, meanwhile, Iraq narrowly missed out on the bronze medal after finishing fourth following a closely fought 1-0 loss to Italy in the third place play-off.