The Two Kicks in the 78th Minute – A Night Vietnamese Football Faces Its Own Darkness

In the 78th minute, the ball was in Dinh Bac's feet. The score in Round 3 of V-League 2026-2027 was already 3-0 for Cong An Hanoi. The away team had almost secured three points, home fans had started leaving their seats, and Dinh Bac only needed to keep the ball for a few more seconds. Suddenly Huynh Tan Sinh rushed in from behind. There was no chance to win the ball, no fair angle for a tackle. The Dong Nai defender raised his leg and kicked twice at the feet of the 22-year-old striker. Dinh Bac lost his balance and fell. The referee showed a yellow card. The whistle blew, but the sound that truly remained on the night of September 20, 2026 was not the whistle. It was the sound of a boundary being broken, a boundary Vietnamese football has long pretended not to see. Earlier, the atmosphere had been tense from the 16th minute. Van Son of Dong Nai struck Dinh Bac in an off-the-ball incident and received a red card. The home team were down to ten men. Cong An Hanoi took advantage, scored three goals, and ended the match as a contest. By the 78th minute, with the score settled, Tan Sinh created a moment that made the entire match remembered for something very different. The two kicks were not part of a tough challenge. They came from anger, from the frustration of a player who had already lost everything in that game, and from a moment of losing control that every professional footballer understands. I have watched the situation many times. Based on my experience watching matches for more than fifty years, Huynh Tan Sinh’s behavior is indefensible. Two consecutive kicks are not a normal foul. They are an action with the clear intention to harm. If the referee had seen it from a different angle, a red card could have been shown. Fans were furious. Many wrote: “Tan Sinh, we are colleagues, why are you so cruel? You must respect a colleague’s legs.” Another said: “This is ugly and unacceptable. This is deliberately trying to destroy an opponent.” I understand the anger. I am angry too. But I want to pause for one moment, because the football I love has never been about quick verdicts. Huynh Tan Sinh was born in 2026. He was a member of Vietnam’s U20 and U23 teams and won a SEA Games gold medal with U23 Vietnam in 2026. He won the V-League with Hanoi FC, Cong An Hanoi, and Quang Nam. He is not a stranger to glory. He once stood on the highest podium of Southeast Asian football and was considered one of the most promising young defenders in Vietnam. So what turned a SEA Games champion into a player who kicks an opponent twice in a match already lost 0-3? I am not asking to excuse him. I am asking because if we do not understand the source of that anger, we will meet it again in other rounds. For years I have written about forgotten players. I call them raw jewels. A raw jewel does not need polishing; it only needs a patient gaze to be loved. Tonight, I look at Huynh Tan Sinh and realize that even a jewel that once shone can be worn down by the pressure of modern football. He once had everything: youth, trophies, expectation. But football does not wait for anyone. When a player is pushed to the edge, when he plays for a weaker team, when he sees his team lose a man in the 16th minute and trail 3-0 at home, what remains is not tactics. It is survival instinct. And survival instinct in football can become violence. Dinh Bac is also a raw jewel. He is 22, skillful, quick, and has a way of making opponents lose control. Van Son struck him in the 16th minute. Tan Sinh kicked him in the 78th minute. I read fear in those actions. People do not know how to stop a young talent with football, so they use what is outside the rules. But if we stop at protecting Dinh Bac and condemning Tan Sinh, we will miss a harder question. Why did a player who once won the V-League and SEA Games fall so far that he kicked an opponent twice in a dead match? Why does our football culture still teach players to be tough, to play dirty, to make opponents afraid? Fans demand a heavy punishment. They say the kicks show reckless violence and will continue if not punished. I agree with that. But I do not believe heavy punishment alone can erase the way we have nurtured violence in football for decades. Fans have the right to be angry. The referee may have been wrong. But responsibility does not end with a yellow card or an angry player. Responsibility lies in how we treat weaker teams, players in decline, and people who have nothing left to lose on the pitch. When a newly promoted team is weak, loses a man in the 16th minute, and faces a heavy defeat, the mental pressure on players is enormous. Tan Sinh is not the first to break down in such circumstances. He is just the one caught most clearly on camera. If we truly want to change Vietnamese football, we cannot just handle one incident. We must look at a coaching culture that worships intensity and ignores emotional discipline. I still remember being mocked as a poet who wandered onto a football pitch because I called Modric’s pass a low cello note in a choir of falling snow. I was not upset. I am proud, because football is poetry. And because I love football by seeing it as poetry, I believe a match stained by violence cannot be told through dry statistics. Goals will be recorded. The 3-0 score will be forgotten. But the image of Tan Sinh kicking Dinh Bac twice will remain, like a sad poem with wrong rhymes, making readers uncomfortable because they know it could have been better. There is a line between intensity and violence. Every player needs intensity to win. But beautiful football is not about who plays dirtier. Beautiful football is a defender rising after being beaten, a striker standing up after being fouled ten times, a referee making the right decision at the hardest moment. Tan Sinh was once part of that beautiful football. He was once the pride of a generation. Looking at him tonight, I do not only see a player who must be punished. I see a person in the middle of a storm he helped create, but also a product of a system that has long tolerated such behavior. I am not saying he is innocent. Huynh Tan Sinh deserves discipline for the two kicks in the 78th minute. Vietnamese football needs strong retrospective punishment to send a message that unsportsmanlike conduct will not be forgiven. But I also believe that if we only throw stones, we will miss the chance to look at what created that moment. Our football culture once celebrated tough players as symbols. We were proud of heated matches, steel tackles, and fearless players. But the price of that language is exactly these meaningless kicks at an opponent’s legs when the match is already decided. The price is a 28-year-old former SEA Games champion losing himself in front of television cameras. The night of September 20 ended 3-0. Dong Nai lost, Cong An Hanoi took three points, and the V-League 2026-2027 table gained another line of results. But I know some matches are not remembered by scores. This one will be remembered by two kicks. Some will call it proof of violence in Vietnamese football. Others will say we need VAR, retrospective bans, and better referees. All of that is true. But I want to add one thing: we need enough compassion to see a player who made a mistake as a person who needs to be saved, not a monster to be stoned. I have lived through many seasons and watched generations of players rise and fall. I know that youth and trophies are not enough to keep a person standing forever. I also know that some evenings the pitch is so empty that I can hear the ball sigh. Tonight the stadium was not empty, but I still heard that sigh. It came from a former hope who is now just an angry shadow leaving the pitch under the sound of whistles. The stands may be full, but history still needs witnesses to tell its most beautiful sadness. And the sadness of Vietnamese football tonight is not only a defeat. It is the sight of an old jewel breaking itself in front of everyone. I still believe in magic, because I have seen a jewel find itself in the mud. But tonight I saw another jewel sink deeper into the mud. Huynh Tan Sinh may be punished. He may apologize. But will anyone be patient enough to sit down and ask what turned him into someone who kicks a colleague in a meaningless match? Will we, the people who love football, dare to look at our own darkness and change before it is too late? I am not sure. But I still want to ask that question, because football is poetry, and poetry never ends with a kick.