V.League and the "running a lot equals playing well" trap: When Vietnamese football turns itself into track and field

In the most recent V.League match I sat through to the final whistle, one detail kept me glued to the stats sheet. A central midfielder on the home side finished the game with more than 11 kilometers covered — on par with numbers I have seen in Bundesliga matches. But his team lost. And the losing goal came from a move of just three passes through the middle, landing in exactly the space the man who ran the most had left exposed.

I mention this not to criticize an individual. I mention it because it is a miniature portrait of a disease that Vietnamese football proudly mistakes for a virtue. The louder the stands, the easier the truth hides. And in the V.League, that noise usually takes the shape of applause for a player who just sprinted at full speed to chase a ball he never needed to chase.

I write this from Nha Trang, with a foundation born in Germany in my head and years of watching Vietnamese football in my heart. I am not here to teach Vietnamese people how to play the game. I am here to ask a question few dare to ask: what if the football we worship is really just track and field dressed in a jersey?

Context: the consensus everyone believes

Let us begin by naming the consensus. When a V.League team loses, the three most common explanations are: no money, biased referees, and "played well but got unlucky." When a team wins, the most common praise is "fighting spirit," "never stops running," "passion." This is the truth everyone believes — an axiom that needs no proof, passed from stand to stand, from coffee table to coffee table.

I have lived in Vietnam long enough to understand why that consensus carries weight. Football here is not just sport. It is identity, it is pride after decades of hardship, it is where people place their longing to reach out to the continent. Vietnamese football's golden generation — from the AFF Cup 2026 triumph, to the Asian Cup 2026 quarterfinal, to the first-ever appearance in the third round of World Cup 2026 qualifying — proved that this football is real, has real strength, and has a future.

But that very success reinforced the consensus instead of breaking it. Because when the national team won with counter-attacking, discipline, and spirit, people concluded that this was the eternal formula. When a club won the title by running more than its opponent, people concluded that fitness was the key. The consensus does not merely exist — it replicates itself.

I want to raise the issue seriously here. Vietnamese football does not lack talent. A country that produces some of the most technically gifted players in Southeast Asia cannot be called poor in people. The problem lies elsewhere: in how we define what it means to "play well." And that definition is haunted by the most measurable yet most deceptive thing of all — distance covered.

Core: when data betrays the consensus

Based on my experience tracking matches, I began to systematically record the metrics few mention in the V.League. Not goals, not assists, but the numbers that tell the operating story: passes before losing the ball, pressing actions in the opponent's half, and the average distance between lines when a team is out of possession.

What I found was not pleasant. V.League teams run a great deal, but most of that distance is burned repairing positional errors they themselves created. This is the crux the consensus conceals. A player who runs 11 kilometers in a match is not necessarily the best player. He may simply be the one standing in the wrong place the most, paying with his legs for his brain's bad decisions.

Think of it this way. In a well-organized modern pressing system, the whole team moves as a block, and running distance is distributed evenly, with purpose. In a reactive system, where each player waits for the ball before deciding, running distance becomes chaotic compensation. One player runs to cover for another, one line tears so another can plug it. The result is a match that looks very "hot," very "fiery," but is in essence a mess of motion.

The PPDA metric — passes allowed per defensive action — is what I track most closely. The lower the PPDA, the more aggressive and organized the pressing. Watching the V.League across three recent seasons, I saw a worrying pattern: most teams have high PPDA, meaning they wait rather than initiate, yet they cover high distances — a contradictory combination explicable only by defending through individual effort rather than structure.

This is where my German lens knocks. In the Bundesliga, no one praises a midfielder for running 12 kilometers. They praise him for running in the right place, at the right time, to plug a gap the opponent was about to exploit. Distance there is a consequence, not a goal. In Vietnam, distance is often presented as proof of dedication — as if football were a marathon where whoever runs more wins.

But I do not want to impose a European yardstick crudely. Because when I ask myself why V.League teams behave this way, the answer lies in local conditions, not in inferiority. Let me analyze that.

First, the pitch. At many V.League grounds, the quality of the turf does not allow for high-tempo, short-passing play that requires the ball to roll smoothly. When the ball bounces, when the pitch is poor, multi-pass combination becomes a gamble. Under those conditions, choosing direct, few-touch, fitness-based football is a rational decision for survival. This is what a Bundesliga view easily overlooks.

Second, the climate. Heat and humidity in Vietnam turn continuous running into a physiological ordeal. A European team running a high press at 15 degrees Celsius cannot copy that formula verbatim at 33 degrees Celsius and 80 percent humidity. This means any analysis that criticizes the V.League for lacking pressing must concede that the human body has physical limits, and those limits differ by latitude.

Third, and this I consider most important, the financial and human-resource structure. The V.League is a competition where most clubs depend heavily on one or two sponsors or parent conglomerates. Broadcasting revenue is low, commercial income limited, and wage bills tightly controlled. In that context, a club can hardly invest in a proper tactical coaching system that takes years to build. They need immediate results, and immediate results usually come from simple things: fitness, spirit, and a few individuals shining.

I remember sitting down once with a former V.League coach. He told me something I wrote down at once: "Here, we don't have time to teach players how to move off the ball. We have three weeks before the season, and in those three weeks I must choose between teaching them to stand in the right place or teaching them to run without tiring." He chose the latter. And he was not wrong — under his conditions.

But this is exactly where the consensus becomes a trap. Because when an entire football nation chooses the short-term solution, the short-term accumulates into a system. Clubs begin to select players on fitness criteria rather than tactical intelligence. Academies produce players who run hard but do not know how to create space. And the national team, stepping onto the continental stage against better-organized opponents, begins to expose its own limits.

When the stands are empty, the match begins to speak its true voice. In matches without spectators — moments when the roar no longer conceals — I noticed something the stats make clear: V.League teams create very few chances from deliberate combination play. Most goals come from opponent errors, from set pieces, or from solitary moments of brilliance. This is not the football of systems. This is the football of individuals waiting for the opponent's system to collapse.

And this connects directly to one of my core beliefs about modern football: gegenpressing has been decoded. When Jürgen Klopp took Europe by storm, the whole world rushed to copy high pressing. But by 2026, top teams have learned to escape the press with accurate long passes and quick switches of play. As a result, mid-tier teams everywhere — including in Vietnam — are forced toward another style: using fitness to turn football into track and field, where tactics give way to endurance.

In the V.League, this happens in a particular form. Lacking a genuine pressing structure, teams choose to run to close gaps after already losing the ball. They do not press to win the ball in the opponent's half; they run back to salvage. High running distance becomes the sign of a passive defensive system, not an active attacking one.

Let me give a concrete example from what I observed. In one of the most anticipated derbies of last season, two leading clubs met in a match I re-analyzed by watching the footage three times. The combined running distance of both teams exceeded 220 kilometers — an enormous figure. But successful passes into the opponent's final third could be counted on one hand. Both teams ran like mad, yet almost no one among them was actually playing football in the sense of creating organized chances.

The match ended 1-0. The goal came from a corner. And in the post-match press conference, both coaches said their teams had "played well." One of them was telling the truth. The other was fooling himself, or fooling the audience. But the audience did not need fooling — they had already fooled themselves, because the consensus had taught them that running a lot means playing well.

This is where I must be careful, because I know I am stepping onto dangerous ground. The man on the bench sees most clearly who is acting. And I, as an outside observer, must admit I may be seeing an incomplete picture. I am not in the dressing room. I do not know the pressures a V.League coach faces from the board, from sponsors, from the fans themselves. I only see what happens on the pitch, and I reason from there.

But precisely for that reason, I believe in a principle: I do not trust my eyes, I trust what my eyes do not see. My eyes see a player running ceaselessly. But what the eyes do not see is the space he leaves behind each time he surges forward. What the eyes do not see is how many times a teammate must abandon position to cover for him. What the eyes do not see are the passes he cannot make because he is exhausted after 70 minutes of aimless running.

The contrarian angle: where I might be wrong

Now comes the most honest part of this piece. Where might I be wrong?

I might be wrong in underestimating the rationality of a fitness-based style in the Vietnamese context. It may be that under poor pitches, harsh climate, and a congested schedule, choosing fitness as the foundation is the right decision, and every sophisticated tactical analysis is merely the product of a foreigner sitting in an air-conditioned room.

I might also be wrong in imposing a linear development model on a football culture with its own trajectory. Vietnamese football does not have to follow the path of Germany, England, or Spain. It has the right to find its own way. And if that way runs through fitness, then that is the choice of the Vietnamese, not mine.

I might be wrong in ignoring the real progress taking place. There are academies in Vietnam quietly developing players in a more modern direction. There are young coaches bringing in new ideas. There are players competing abroad and bringing back a different standard. If I look only at the dark side, I am doing something unjust.

And finally, I might be wrong because I am committing the very error I warn others against: turning a personal observation into a universal truth. I have watched hundreds of V.League matches, but hundreds are not all. A sample, however large, is still a sample. And anyone who claims to fully understand a football culture from the stands alone is deluding himself.

A thought worth pondering

So, if I am half right, what happens next?

I offer a verifiable prediction. In the next two seasons, whichever V.League team deliberately reduces its average running distance while increasing passes before losing the ball and lowering PPDA in a controlled way will finish in the upper half of the table — regardless of its budget. Not because they run less, but because they run better.

I know this prediction can be refuted. I accept that risk, and I will track it myself. What I do not accept is the silence of the consensus — the truth everyone believes that fitness is the answer. Because the real answer lies elsewhere, where no GPS device can measure it: in a player's ability to understand that sometimes the best way to play football is to stand still in the right place.

Sitting in the stands is like sitting in a bubble — everyone nods, no one sees anything. I left that bubble long ago. The question is: how many of us are ready to step out with me?