V.League 2026-2026: No Shortage of Money, No Shortage of Talent — But Vietnamese Football Is Trapping Itself

Nguyen Xuan Son broke his leg in the second leg of the 2026 ASEAN Championship final at Rajamangala Stadium in Bangkok. Vietnam still won, still lifted the trophy, still had a night when the whole country could not sleep. But in my small studio, the image that lingered was not the embraces — it was the stretcher carrying the number 12 off the pitch. I rewound the tape three times. And I asked myself a question that will certainly make many people uncomfortable: if you remove Nguyen Xuan Son from the equation, what is left of the Vietnam national team?

This is not a question that diminishes an individual. It is a question about a system. A healthy football nation is not built on a pair of legs — no matter how many goals those legs score. It is built on a structure in which a substitution does not bring down the whole building.

I have followed Vietnamese football for more than three decades, from the days when matches were still broadcast over radio, to the day I left my television station to start my own podcast. And what I have realized after all those years is this: Vietnamese football does not lack money, does not lack talent, does not lack fans. It lacks something far harder to build — a system that makes money flow to the right places.

A league that lives on the breath of a few giants

V.League 1 has had 14 clubs in recent seasons. But if you look at the table and the spending sheet, you see a different reality: the league operates as if only five or six teams truly compete, while the rest merely play the role of point contributors. Cong An Ha Noi, Thep Xanh Nam Dinh, Ha Noi FC, Dong A Thanh Hoa, Becamex Binh Duong, and sometimes Hai Phong — that is the big-spending group. The rest live in austerity, sometimes in survival mode.

I am not saying this to criticize the smaller clubs. I am saying it to point out a structure. When money concentrates in a few places, the league loses its most precious asset: uncertainty. And a league that is no longer uncertain is no longer compelling — even if a few derbies still fill the stands.

Look at how the big clubs build their squads. They buy. They buy domestic stars, they buy quality foreign players, and they also buy promising young players from the academies of smaller clubs. The result is a one-way flow: talent flows from the foot of the mountain to the peak, and rarely flows back down.

This seems reasonable in the short term. A team that wants to win must buy stars. But look at the long-term consequences. When smaller clubs no longer have good players to sell, they lose their most important source of income. When they lose that income, they cannot invest in their academies. When they do not invest in their academies, they have no players to sell. The loop closes, and it closes in a direction that harms everyone.

I once said on air that V.League risks becoming a league of owners rather than a league of clubs. It was a provocative way of putting it, but I believe it. A club lives on identity, on community, on its academy. An owner lives on inspiration, on prestige, and sometimes on some interest that has nothing to do with football. When the owner withdraws, the club disappears. We have seen this happen many times.

Numbers do not lie, but numbers do not tell stories either

I hold a fairly extreme view on data, and I will say it plainly. Heat maps and possession metrics have become a new kind of fortune-telling. People look at a heat map, see a player touching the ball a lot, and conclude that he played well. But a heat map does not tell you where that player touched the ball, in what situation, and most importantly — whether he made his teammates better.

Based on my experience watching matches, I have learned that you must always put numbers in context. A midfielder who holds the ball 70 times in a match could be a playmaker, or he could be a slow player who keeps the ball too long because he does not know where to pass. The same number, two completely different stories.

And this is where I want to set an offside trap for those who are reading. Many people will say: "Naturalization is good, because it makes the national team stronger." I agree — in the short term. But that is exactly the trap. You see a striker scoring, you see a trophy, you see a moment of joy, and you conclude that this path is right. But you have skipped the more important question: why do we need him at all?

Naturalization: a bandage on a deep wound

Nguyen Xuan Son is a beautiful story. A Brazilian man comes to Vietnam, scores goals, falls in love with this country, takes citizenship, and becomes a national hero. I have nothing to criticize about him personally. He is a wonderful player, and I believe he genuinely wants to give everything for the red shirt.

But look at the bigger picture. When the national team depends on a naturalized striker to score, it means that for more than twenty years, we have failed to produce a domestic striker of continental caliber. That is a failure of the youth development system, not a success of the naturalization policy.

I have witnessed this in China, where I live and work. When Evergrande collapsed, I was not sad that they lost money. I was sad that they forgot how to play. They bought everything, won everything, and then when the money ran out, they had nothing left to fall back on — no strong academy, no identity, no system. And I fear V.League is heading down exactly that road.

What is worrying is that we are looking at the medal and forgetting the foundation. An ASEAN Championship title is genuine pride. But it should not be the end of a cycle — it must be the beginning of a system. If we celebrate and then return to the old ways, this title will be like a peak followed by a long descent.

Look at the football nations in the region. Thailand once had a golden generation, then stalled because it could not regenerate its resources. Indonesia is pushing naturalization on a much larger scale, and they too face the same question: when the naturalized players grow old, who replaces them? Malaysia, the Philippines — all are struggling between short-term results and long-term identity.

Vietnam has an advantage that many countries do not: a generation of technically trained players, from Nguyen Quang Hai to Nguyen Hoang Duc, from Nguyen Tien Linh to Nguyen Van Quyet. These are players with vision, skill, and ambition. The problem is not that we lack talent. The problem is that we have not built a system durable enough to nurture and exploit that talent consistently.

Gegenpressing has been decoded, and we are still chasing it

There is an interesting thing that few people notice. While European football has begun to decode gegenpressing — the high-press style — many teams in Southeast Asia are still trying to imitate it mechanically. They run, they press, they tackle, and then they are exhausted in the second half. They turn football into athletics.

I have watched matches in which two teams ran a combined total of more than 220 km, and the score was still 0-0. That is not elite football. That is two teams so afraid of losing that they dare not play. High pressing is only effective when you have a structure, a discipline, and an ability to switch states instantly. Without those, it is just running.

Mid-table teams in V.League are stuck between two worlds. They want to play modern football, but they do not have enough players to play modern football. They want to defend solidly, but they are under pressure to attack. The result is a hybrid football — not modern enough to be beautiful, not pragmatic enough to be effective.

I will say it plainly: a team without a clear tactical identity will never go far. And most of V.League is in that situation. They change tactics from match to match, from opponent to opponent, from the mood of the coach to the mood of the coach. That is not flexibility. That is a lack of direction.

Youth development: lottery ticket or future?

I have a growing concern about how football academies operate. In many parts of the world, and I fear in Vietnam too, scouting networks are producing two things at once: genuine prodigies, and "football lottery tickets" — families who send their children away hoping to change their lives, only to be shattered when the child does not make it.

A twelve-year-old child leaves his family to enter an academy. If he succeeds, the whole family's life changes. If he fails, he returns with a stolen childhood and a family that has fallen apart. We rarely talk about the children who fail, because they do not appear on the front page. But they exist, and they are far more numerous than those who succeed.

This is not an argument against youth development. This is an argument for a more responsible youth development system. A good academy does not only train players. It trains human beings. It prepares those children for another path if football does not smile on them.

Hoang Anh Gia Lai was once the symbol of youth development in Vietnam. Their academy produced a memorable generation of talent. But then the club stalled, and we saw a painful truth: youth development without sustainable investment and a transition system is just a beautiful dream that fades.

Who is responsible?

This is the hardest part, and also the part I want to say most plainly. In Vietnamese football, when everything succeeds, many people take credit. When everything fails, no one is responsible. That is the mark of a system lacking transparency.

I believe in individual responsibility. A coach must be responsible for his tactics. A technical director must be responsible for long-term direction. A club president must be responsible for the stability of the organization. And a federation must be responsible for the health of the entire football ecosystem.

But when no one dares to take responsibility, when every failure is blamed on "bad luck" or "the referee" or "the weather," then we are building a culture of evasion. And that culture, in turn, produces further failures.

I have said this many times on air, and I will say it again: better to be a lone eccentric in the studio than a voice reading someone else's script. I do not care if telling the truth costs me friends. I care that telling lies costs Vietnamese football its chance to change.

What comes next?

I will make a prediction, and I will frame it as a prophecy. In the next two seasons, V.League will witness a shift that many have not yet noticed. The big clubs will keep spending, but they will begin to hit limits — limits of finance, limits of personnel, and limits of the owners' patience.

And when those limits arrive, the only thing that will hold a club together is what it has built from within: its academy, its identity, its community. The clubs that understand this early will survive. The clubs that rely only on the wallet of a single owner will disappear, or become a shadow of themselves.

I could be wrong. I have been wrong many times in my career, and I am always ready to admit it. But if I am right, this will be one of the most important turning points for Vietnamese football this decade. And I want to sit in my studio, re-read these lines, and know that at least I dared to say what many only think in silence.

Vietnamese football stands at a crossroads. On one side is the road of medals bought with money and naturalization. On the other is the road of foundations built with time and patience. Both roads have a price. But only one of them leads to a genuinely mature football nation.

And I believe that if we are brave enough to look the truth in the eye, we will choose the right road. Not because it is easy — but because it is right. That is all I want to say to those who are listening. And as always, I leave this question to you: if you were the one responsible, which road would you choose?