Vietnamese Football: A Journey Beyond Just Victories

Vietnamese football is at a crossroads. If one only looks at the scoreboard, it might seem everything is on track. But I have been following the matches of the national team and clubs for years, and I realize that the score is exactly what hides the truth. Numbers like 1-0 or 2-1 sometimes reflect a completely different reality from what happens on the pitch. In a context where world football increasingly emphasizes tactical evolution, Vietnamese football is still struggling with the question of tactical development. The story is not about how many matches we win, but how we operate an entire ecosystem — from youth training to the domestic league. People hate me because I am right one match earlier than them. I have watched the U19 players of the Steel Nam Dinh or the young talents of PVF, and I see a systemic issue: we have talent, but we lack the mechanism to convert that talent into an advantage at the national team level. The academies of big clubs like Cong An Ha Noi or The Cong-Viettel are viewed as star-making factories, but in reality, less than 10 percent of young players from these academies ever secure a path to the first team. That is an alarming number. Forget the score. The score is what hides the truth. Look at how clubs like Becamex Binh Duong or Hai Phong FC operate. They do not have the massive budgets of richer clubs, but they have a clear and persistent football philosophy. Meanwhile, many big clubs over-rely on foreign players and forget to build their own tactical identity. If football lives on money alone, Vietnam will never be able to compete with Thailand at the regional level, let alone at the Asian level. Based on my experience following matches, I notice that the pressure from fans and media is killing the development of young players. The 2026 season saw players like Dinh Bac or Van Khang being burdened with excessive expectations, while names like Cong Phuong or Xuan Truong were ruthlessly discarded when they no longer met expectations. We demand that players prove themselves immediately. We are cruel to them. The pressure of re-injury and the fear of making mistakes cause them to hesitate — and that destroys entire cohorts of potential. A piece that does not make anyone uncomfortable is what I call a failed piece. So I will be direct: rumors about a Vietnamese-heritage player being invited to join the national team are a psychological trap. The transfer market is not a science — it is street-level psychology. We are expecting one individual to change an entire collective, while that collective itself does not yet have a properly functioning framework. I was wrong in 2026 when I underestimated a cohort of young players who made a strong breakthrough. And I will be wrong again. The difference is who dares to speak first. An empty stadium is a laboratory, while the crowd is a confounding variable. In 2026, when matches took place under special circumstances, I collected data on possession rates and shots on target of Vietnamese clubs. The results showed that in the absence of fans, many weaker teams performed far better than when the pressure of the crowd was present. This reflects a truth: mentality is the fatal weakness of Vietnamese football. We have skill, we have speed, but we lack the composure needed in decisive moments. The problem with Vietnamese football is not that we have bad players. The style of Vietnamese teams is not the worst. The worst is that the crowd refuses to look straight at the truth. The media over-praises when the national team wins, then tramples them into the mud when they lose. Look at how public opinion treated head coach Philippe Troussier compared to his predecessor Park Hang-seo. Same results, same unimpressive style, but public reactions are entirely different. This is unfair and causes serious damage to the sustainable development of our football. I spend 30 percent of my working time verifying data sources, and I can confirm that figures about Vietnam's investment in youth football are being inflated. In reality, many clubs in the V.League still treat youth development as a legal obligation, not as a strategic investment. They register youth teams just to qualify for the league, but do not actually train them with international lessons. When I observed the youth matches of SLNA or Da Nang in Asian competitions, I clearly saw the large gap in handling situations in tight spaces compared to their South Korean or Japanese opponents. One thing Vietnamese football must learn from developed football nations is patience. Young players need playing time, need to be allowed to make mistakes, and need a low-pressure environment to develop day by day. Instead, we force them to shine in their very first match. If they cannot, they are replaced by a foreign player who is also just looking for a lucrative contract. This vicious cycle has continued for 20 years. The first career boost does not come from a victory; it comes from a piece that is hated. And I know this piece will be hated. Because it points to an unpleasant truth: Vietnamese football needs a revolution in thinking before it can have a revolution in tactics. When we talk about sending players abroad, we must ask ourselves: do they have enough mental strength to survive in a harsher environment? Are they equipped with the necessary survival skills to be independent in a foreign country? Look at the reality: the number of Vietnamese players who have successfully played abroad is extremely rare. Nguyen Quang Hai once had a difficult period at Pau FC before returning home. That is not a failure of the individual, but the failure of a whole training system that failed to prepare him for adapting to modern football. We are good at creating individually gifted players, but we fail in developing tactical thinking and game-reading ability — the two decisive factors at the highest level of world football. I do not have a perfect answer to this problem, but I know that the answer does not lie in constantly replacing the head coach whenever the national team gets poor results. The average coaching tenure for the Vietnam national team over the past 10 years has been less than two years. Meanwhile, a club like Albirex Niigata in Japan can keep a coach for five consecutive years with the same football philosophy. And what is the result? They become a team with a clear identity and produce a consistent pipeline of quality players. What we are witnessing in national youth tournaments is not a shortage of talent. We have talent. What we lack is a long-term development pathway, where a promising 13-year-old boy is scientifically guided from academy to youth team, to the first team, and finally to the national team. Vietnam's U17 national team once made headlines at the 2026 AFC U17 Asian Cup finals with their disciplined and organized style. But the question: two or three years from now, how many of those players can still compete for a starting spot in the V.League? I envision a future where Vietnamese football no longer needs to seek recognition from outside, but confidently builds its own football identity. That will happen when we dare to face the inadequacies of our system and fix them with patience and a long-term strategy. It will happen when praise does not make us forget our inherent weaknesses. The future of Vietnamese football will not be decided in a SEA Games final or a match at the Asian Cup qualifiers. It is being decided today, in the quiet training sessions of 10-year-old and 12-year-old players at training centers across the country. If we do not change what is happening there, any immediate victory is just a fresh coat of paint over a cracked wall. Give me a generation of players nurtured with patience, and I will give you a football nation to be proud of. But first, we must be brave enough to abandon our obsession with short-term victories.