Vietnamese Football: V.League 1, the National Team, and the Unnoticed Runs

In a late afternoon training session at Viettel's training centre in Hanoi, I stood about fifteen metres from the touchline. Close enough to hear studs grinding into grass that had been bleached pale by the sun. A young player performed a backheel touch, stopped, turned, changed direction. No camera pointed at him. No spectators. Only the whistle of an assistant coach and the thud of a ball against a shooting tarp.

I have stood on many touchlines like that in more than twenty years in this trade. I have learned one thing: the rhythm of a football nation is not measured by the crowd in the stands, but by the training sessions nobody films. In Vietnam, those sessions are multiplying. But they are still not being counted.

The biggest changes usually begin with a run nobody notices. And to see that run in Vietnamese football, it needs to be placed against a much larger picture than a single match.

Context: a football nation caught between two rhythms

On 5 January 2026, at Rajamangala Stadium in Bangkok, Vietnam beat Thailand 3-2 in the second leg of the 2026 ASEAN Championship final, closing out a 5-3 aggregate win over two legs. It was Vietnam's first Southeast Asian title since 2026, and the third in the national team's history, after 2026 and 2026. Head coach Kim Sang-sik, a South Korean appointed in May 2026 to replace Philippe Troussier, had returned the team to regional supremacy in under eight months.

Behind the medal, however, another story was unfolding quietly. A few months earlier, Vietnam had been eliminated in the second round of Asian qualifying for the 2026 World Cup, finishing behind Iraq and Indonesia in their group. That failure was not discussed much in the post-mortems, because the ASEAN Championship campaign followed immediately. But it remains there, like a crack under fresh paint.

At club level, V.League 1 entered the 2026-2026 season with fourteen teams. Thep Xanh Nam Dinh, champions of the 2026-2026 season, stayed in the leading group for most of the campaign. Cong An Ha Noi, Hanoi FC, Viettel, Dong A Thanh Hoa and Becamex Binh Duong formed the chasing pack. At the bottom, the relegation battle ran to the final rounds, involving traditional clubs such as SHB Da Nang and Hoang Anh Gia Lai.

That is the surface of the table. But the table says nothing about pitch quality, about the number of training sessions, about the financial structure of each club, or about how a nineteen-year-old learns to place his feet on the grass. I do not ask questions; I only watch how they stand, how they signal, and how the match changes course. And what I have seen in Vietnam over the past two years is a football nation with two different rhythms, overlapping like two waves out of phase.

The core: where the rhythm is built

One of the biggest changes in Vietnam's national team under Kim Sang-sik lies in its defensive structure. In the major matches of the 2026 ASEAN Championship, the team often started with a back three, combined with two high-running wing-backs. That structure allowed the team to keep numbers in central areas while creating space for fast transitions. But the more interesting detail lies in how the back three shifts, not in the number three itself.

In the first half of the first-leg final at Viet Tri Stadium, I noticed a detail that repeated itself. Every time Thailand built up from the right flank, the central defender did not drop back to protect the box. He stepped up half a yard, placing himself in the gap between the midfield line and the defence, and only retreated once the ball had crossed the vertical line. That movement appears on no heat map. But it is what kept Vietnam's defensive line from being stretched horizontally.

The player performing that movement changed from match to match. Sometimes it was a young centre-back. Sometimes it was a player already accustomed to the captain's role. The captain does not shout; he simply changes how he places his foot on the grass. And that is the signal the other players read before anyone in the stands has noticed.

Further forward, the question is named Nguyen Xuan Son. The Brazil-born striker, naturalised as Vietnamese in 2026, scored seven goals at the 2026 ASEAN Championship and won the Golden Boot. His presence changed how Vietnam attacks. With a centre-forward able to hold the ball with his back to goal and act as a wall, the wide midfielders can push higher and take more risks. The long ball became a rational option rather than a last resort.

But this is where the analysis must pause for a beat. Before Xuan Son arrived, Vietnam had spent years building a possession game through central midfield, with players capable of short-ball circulation. Switching to a structure anchored by a target man is not a step backwards. But it raises a question of continuity: when Xuan Son is absent, how will the team play?

I saw part of the answer in the matches he missed. The team reverted to a three-man midfield, pushed the ball wide more often, and accepted that the number of chances created would fall. That is a reasonable adaptation. But it also shows that Vietnam's tactical system, at this moment, still depends on a specific individual more than a football nation would like.

At club level, the picture is more complicated. V.League 1 is a highly competitive league in the middle, but lacks stability at both ends. The strongest clubs can keep a squad together for several seasons, while clubs in the lower half routinely change coaches and terminate contracts mid-season. That imbalance produces a league where results are often decided by budgets more than by tactics.

Nam Dinh is one example. The club from the south of the Red River Delta built its squad around a core of quality domestic players, combined with foreign and naturalised players. They won the 2026-2026 V.League 1 title and maintained their position the following season. But behind that success is a financial structure heavily dependent on local resources and major sponsors. When those resources change, the club will have to change with them.

In another corner of the league, Hoang Anh Gia Lai is the opposite story. The club's football academy was once the pride of Vietnamese football, producing many players who wore the national shirt for more than a decade. But that model also revealed its limits: as that golden generation aged or moved to other clubs, the team could not sustain its position. Youth development only has lasting value when it is a continuous stream, not a single cohort.

PVF, Viettel and Hanoi FC have tried to build such streams in recent years. But the gap between academy and first team remains wide. A graduate at eighteen typically needs another three to four years to play regularly in V.League 1. During that window, many players lose momentum, drop to lower divisions, or leave professional football altogether.

There is one rarely cited but important indicator: the number of minutes played by under-23 players in V.League 1. If that figure is low, academies cannot prove their value to club boards. And if they cannot prove their value, investment in youth development shrinks. It is a loop Vietnamese football has not fully escaped.

Referees, VAR and trust

Another part of the story lies in officiating. VAR was introduced to V.League 1 from the 2026-2026 season, marking a technical step forward. But the adoption of technology always brings new controversies. Decisions in sensitive situations, especially incidents inside the box, still regularly become the focus of public debate after each round.

What is notable is how coaches and players react to VAR. In several matches I watched, teams began adjusting their play to avoid situations that could be reviewed. Challenges on the edge of the box became more cautious. Defenders used their hands less when contesting aerial balls. Those small changes do not appear in match reports, but they are reshaping how the game operates.

In another dimension, cases involving malpractice in Vietnamese football continue to surface. In 2026, several players in the professional leagues were investigated by authorities over conduct-related violations in matches. Those cases affect the image of the league, the trust of spectators, and the young players trying to build careers.

Trust is hard to measure, but it has a direct effect on league revenue. When spectators are uncertain about the transparency of results, they spend less time on matches, and sponsors reconsider their investment. That loop is not unique to Vietnamese football. But its impact is greater in leagues where broadcast revenue is still low.

Continental cups and the limits of ambition

At continental level, Vietnamese clubs regularly enter Asian Football Confederation competitions. Their recent record in those arenas has not matched the national team's standing. There are many reasons: congested calendars, limited squad depth, and physical gaps against clubs from South Korea, Japan or China.

But there is a less cited reason. Vietnamese clubs often prioritise the domestic league over continental competitions. That is a rational economic choice, since V.League 1 revenue is larger and the risk lower. But it also creates a consequence: Vietnamese players get fewer chances to face higher-tier opponents, and therefore fewer chances to develop tactically.

The national team cannot be stronger than its clubs allow. That is a simple rule, often forgotten. When Vietnam won the 2026 ASEAN Championship, most of its key players were based at home. That shows the quality of V.League 1 at the top end is good enough for the region. But to go further in Asia, more is needed.

The contrarian angle: what the title conceals

After 5 January 2026, Vietnamese public opinion overflowed with praise. That reaction was reasonable. But in the weeks that followed, a question began to appear on specialist forums: is the ASEAN title concealing structural problems in Vietnamese football?

My answer is yes, but not in the way many assume. The problem is not the quality of the national team. Vietnam played well and deserved the title. The problem lies in how that success is used as a full stop rather than a starting point.

When a national team wins, pressure on the coaching staff temporarily eases. But that pressure will return in the next World Cup qualifying cycle, when the team will face opponents far above Southeast Asian level. What works against Thailand, the Philippines or Singapore may not work against Japan, South Korea or Iran.

This is the point external analysis often misses. Pundits in Europe look at Vietnam's ASEAN Championship results and conclude Vietnamese football is improving. Observers in Asia look at World Cup qualifying and conclude Vietnamese football still has a gap. Both conclusions are correct, but both miss a dimension: the development rhythm of this football nation is uneven across its layers.

The top layer is advancing quickly. The middle layer is advancing slowly. The bottom layer, meaning the youth development system and league structure, advances at a speed that depends on each locality's resources. That unevenness is the mark of a football nation in transition, not a sign of failure. But it is also the biggest medium-term risk.

Another contrarian angle concerns naturalised players. Nguyen Xuan Son wearing the Vietnamese shirt sparked a wave of debate about identity. Some argued the team should rely more on domestic players. But from a purely sporting standpoint, a high-quality naturalised player can raise the whole team's level, and through that create positive pressure on domestic players to improve and compete for places.

The real question is not whether to have naturalised players. It is whether the youth development system is strong enough to produce domestic players who can compete with them. If the answer is no, naturalisation becomes a stopgap rather than a strategy.

The people who keep the pitch

There is a group of people that analyses of Vietnamese football almost never mention. They are the groundskeepers, the fitness assistant coaches, the medical and physiotherapy staff, the logistics workers at lower-division clubs. They do not appear on television. But without them, training sessions would not happen, and players would not recover.

On a reporting trip to a stadium in central Vietnam, I met a man who had tended that pitch for more than fifteen years. He told me about each type of grass, about the rainy and dry seasons, about when he had to water the surface so it would not be slippery when the match kicked off. He did not know the names of many players who had played on that pitch. But he knew exactly which spots tended to sink.

They still tend the grass in empty stadiums, because they know that one day the lights will come back on. That is not a literary metaphor. It is a job description. The people who keep the pitch are the foundation Vietnamese football stands on, and how professional they are determines how professional the whole football nation becomes.

In recent years, some Vietnamese clubs have invested more in facilities and support staff. But that investment remains uneven. Some teams train on surfaces that meet international standards; others must train on red-dirt pitches during the rainy season. That gap has a direct effect on the technical quality of young players.

A young player training on good grass will learn to control the ball more precisely, because the ball rolls along the trajectory he intends. A young player training on a poor surface will learn to adapt to unpredictability, but will struggle to develop skills that demand high precision. Both types have value. But at continental level, the second type is often at a disadvantage.

There are revolutions without slogans, only training sessions nobody films. And in Vietnam, those sessions are happening in many places, at different levels of investment, in different conditions. That is a reality the league table does not reflect.

Signals to watch

In the coming months, there are several signals I will track to judge the direction of Vietnamese football. The first is the number of minutes played by under-23 players in V.League 1. If that figure rises, it signals that clubs trust their youth. If it falls, it signals that pressure for results is crowding out long-term investment.

The second is how the national team plays in matches where Nguyen Xuan Son is absent. If the coaching staff builds an effective alternative attacking plan, that signals a maturing system. If not, the team will remain dependent on one individual.

The third is the level of investment in facilities at clubs outside the leading group. That is a hard indicator to measure but it has the biggest long-term effect. A football nation cannot be strong if only three or four clubs meet professional standards.

The fourth is how Vietnamese clubs approach continental competitions. If they begin to see them as an opportunity to develop rather than a burden, that will be a shift in mindset more meaningful than any regional trophy.

Finally, I will keep watching training sessions. Not to find beautiful plays, but to see how many young players are performing small, repeated movements that nobody films. Those movements do not make news. But they make the future. And in a football nation in transition like Vietnam, the future often begins in places the cameras do not point at.

There is one thing I have learned after more than twenty years on the touchline: the biggest changes never begin at a press conference. They begin on a late afternoon, on grass gone pale, when nobody is watching, and a young player decides he will run one more time.