Opening

On the morning of March 12, I stood behind the fence of a training ground on the outskirts of Hanoi, holding a notebook with a worn spine. It was still early, and the dew had not yet lifted from the grass. A group of young players was practising shots. I was not counting goals. I was counting something else: after every missed shot, one player bent down to pick up the ball, placed it back in exactly the same spot with his own hands, stepped back three paces, and only then shot again. In forty minutes, he did this twenty-three times. Nobody watched. No camera framed those hands in close-up.

Seventeen years of carrying a notebook while following football teams — from training sessions at Camp des Loges to matches in the V.League — have taught me that most of what decides a team's fate never appears on the scoreboard. It lives in small, repeated rituals that statistics never touch.

I want to tell a different story about Vietnamese football. Its centre is rhythm — something I believe is being misread from both sides: by those on the inside, and by those watching from the outside. Those inside think the problem is talent. Those outside think the problem is money. Both are looking at one place, and both are missing another.

Context: a football nation speeding up

To understand that rhythm, we must place it in the right frame of time. Vietnamese football over the past decade has been the story of a game accelerating faster than its own maturity. In 2026, the national team won the AFF Cup for the first time, ending a regional trophy drought that had lasted for decades. In 2026, the generation of Nguyễn Quang Hải, Nguyễn Công Phượng and Đỗ Hùng Dũng did it again, and in the same year took the U23 side to the final of the AFC U23 Championship in Changzhou — a match the whole country remembers vividly despite the defeat.

Between those two milestones, a new system gradually took shape. The HAGL–Arsenal Academy (later the Hoang Anh Gia Lai Football Academy) was founded in 2026, recruiting eleven-year-olds and raising them on a Western curriculum. PVF, Viettel and later many other centres followed. V.League 1 was fully professionalised, with broadcast rights, a title sponsor, and clubs converting to joint-stock models. Vietnamese football began speaking the language of modern football: academies, scouting, sports science, data analysis.

But there was a lag. When I began following French teams in 2026, Ligue 1 had already operated for more than two decades under a closed academy model, with Clairefontaine as its symbol. In France, a fifteen-year-old already knew that if he could not read the game, he would be cut before he ever touched the ball for the first team. In Vietnam, the golden generation of 2026 grew up in an environment where individual talent could compensate for an immature structure. That was their miracle, and it was also their trap.

In 2026, the national team won the AFF Cup for the third time, this time under South Korean coach Kim Sang-sik, with the arrival of naturalised striker Nguyễn Xuân Son — Brazilian-born, granted citizenship, and transformed into the spearhead who took both the top-scorer and best-player awards. That victory brought joy, but it also opened a series of questions Vietnamese football has not finished answering: about naturalisation, about dependence on individuals, about the gap between regional success and continental ambition.

This is the context I want to keep in mind as I analyse. A football nation with talent, with money that is growing, with enormous expectations, yet still struggling at exactly the spot where I counted twenty-three times a boy bent to pick up a ball behind the fence: the invisible, repeated details that nobody records.

The core: reading the rhythm again

First, the V.League and the problem of structural imbalance.

I once followed a V.League season from afar, through recordings and through friends working in domestic media. What struck me was not the quality of play but the inequality. A handful of clubs — Hanoi FC, Viettel, Cong An Ha Noi, Nam Dinh — concentrate most of the budget, the national-team players and the media pull. The rest of the league lives in a different spiral: tight budgets, ageing stadiums, crowds thinning with each matchday, and a schedule compressed so tightly that players have no real time to recover.

This imbalance is not unique to Vietnam. Ligue 1 also had an era when Paris Saint-Germain pulled so far ahead that the title race lost its competitiveness. But there is a subtle difference. In France, even the smallest club has a youth system, a scouting department, a properly equipped medical room, and a professional culture passed down through generations of staff. In Vietnam, many small clubs have none of that. The gap between strong and weak in the V.League is not only a gap in points. It is a gap in professional infrastructure — in the things that never show up on the scoreboard.

When I asked a veteran Vietnamese scout what he looked for in a young player, the answer stayed with me: "I look for a boy who does not need to be reminded to drink enough water." That is a deeply professional answer, and it says a great deal about the level of the system. In a mature football nation, drinking enough water is a default, a protocol, a job for the medical department. In a football nation still under construction, it remains an individual quality worth scouting for.

Second, the trap of the golden generation.

The 2026 generation was a gift, and like every gift, it came with a price. When a country produces a group of talented players at once, the entire system tends to be built around them. The national team becomes the team of Quang Hải, of Công Phượng, of Dũng, of Văn Toàn. The media builds its imagery around those names. Clubs pay them high wages. And when they reach thirty, the whole system faces a question it has not prepared for: who comes next?

This is something I have observed across many football nations. In Belgium, the golden generation of Hazard, De Bruyne, Lukaku and Courtois was hailed as a once-in-a-century chance to win a major tournament. They did not. Not for lack of talent, but because a golden generation often obscures the development of the generation behind it. Young players find no place in the squad, no minutes, no chance to make mistakes and learn.

Vietnam stands at exactly that intersection. The 2026 generation has passed its peak. Some still play well; some have plateaued. But the system behind them has not produced a successor group strong enough or deep enough to replace them. Nguyễn Xuân Son arrived as a stopgap at centre-forward — a position Vietnamese football had lacked a top-class finisher in for years. But one naturalised striker cannot solve a systemic problem.

I remember a training session at Camp des Loges in 2026, when I followed PSG and took notes on Neymar. He spent fifteen minutes before every session dribbling through six cones in an unchanging order, entirely different from coach Unai Emery's plan. I counted him repeating that drill one hundred and twenty-seven times in a month. When I asked, he simply smiled and said, "habit." What I learned was not about Neymar, but about how an elite football nation turns individual habits into professional standards. In Vietnam, many good habits of the 2026 generation still depend on individual character rather than being institutionalised into protocol.

Third, a data revolution that arrived late.

In recent years, data analysis has begun to seep into Vietnamese football. Big clubs hire analysts, buy tracking software, install cameras to measure player metrics. This is a welcome step. But I have a professional worry.

Data, when imported without an accompanying foundational culture, very easily becomes an empty ritual. I have seen a club buy an expensive analysis system and then let it run while nobody read the reports. It is the same as a coach receiving a dashboard on a player's pressing ability but not knowing that the player has a sore knee or trouble at home.

In France, data does not replace the eye. It supplements the eye. A good Ligue 1 analyst will never tell a coach "this player presses well" without context: he presses well because he plays in a system with cover behind him, or because the opponent is leaving him free. Data in France is a language, not a verdict.

What worries me for Vietnamese football is the gap between the speed of importing tools and the speed of building a culture for reading those tools. A handsome xG figure can get a young striker praised, but it cannot tell you whether he has the patience to make ten runs without receiving the ball. And in football, sometimes those ten wasted runs are exactly what opens the goal on the eleventh.

Fourth, the invisible people.

I have an odd habit: at every club I follow, I find a way to talk to the kit man, the physiotherapist, and the groundskeeper. In France, I once spent three weeks interviewing a kit man at a Ligue 1 club. He told me he could tell exactly which player was struggling psychologically simply by the way they folded their shirt after training. Those who folded neatly and slowly were usually calm. Those who crumpled the shirt and threw it in the basket were usually frustrated.

In Vietnam, such people exist too, and they know similar things. But they are almost never asked. Vietnamese football has a backstage working class — the people who tend the grass, who handle meals, who arrange buses for away trips — who hold part of the game's memory but have no voice in decisions. They are the rhythm I spoke of at the start.

When I counted twenty-three times a young player bent to pick up a ball behind the fence, I was doing what data tables do not do. I was reading a ritual. And ritual, in football, is how human beings process pressure. A team with good rituals is a team that knows how to endure. A team without rituals is a team dependent on inspiration — and inspiration does not last.

Fifth, the naturalisation story and the question of identity.

Nguyễn Xuân Son wearing the national shirt and shining at the 2026 AFF Cup raises a question Vietnamese football will have to live with for years. Naturalisation is nothing new. Many Southeast Asian nations have taken this road for a long time. But how a football nation handles naturalisation says a great deal about its confidence.

A confident football nation uses naturalisation as a supplementary piece, a short-term fix for a specific position, while still investing in its youth system. An insecure football nation uses naturalisation as a shortcut, a way of papering over gaps in development. The difference lies in whether the country treats naturalised players as a last resort.

I have seen this in the French national team. France won the 2026 and 2026 World Cups with a squad diverse in origin, but nobody called it "naturalisation." Because those players grew up inside the French system, spoke French, and came from French academies. The difference is not the passport; it is the process. In Vietnam, the right question is not "should we naturalise or not," but "naturalise for what, and how is the youth system being invested in instead."

Sixth, a view from France: what Vietnamese football has that French football has lost.

Living in Paris, I often think back to the stands in Vietnam. And I notice an irony. French football has everything Vietnamese football lacks: infrastructure, academies, sports science, broadcast money, a dense scouting network. But French football is losing something Vietnamese football still has: the closeness between supporters and the team.

In Vietnam, fans can stand right by the training-ground fence. They know the name of every young player. They follow the team as they would follow a family member. In France, the distance between stand and pitch keeps growing: expensive tickets, strict security, players living in isolated enclaves. Professionalisation has delivered economic efficiency, but it has also cooled the community relationship that was football's root.

This does not mean Vietnamese football should stay as it is. It only means that as Vietnam professionalises, it should be careful not to lose an asset money cannot buy. I have seen clubs in Vietnam sell tickets at prices a factory worker can afford, and I have seen three generations of a family sit together in one stand. That is a cultural advantage. But it is also fragile, and it can disappear within a decade if administrators look only at the balance sheet.

Seventh, Vietnamese players abroad: the dream and the trap.

One of the topics I follow most closely from Paris is the path of Vietnamese players going abroad. Nguyễn Quang Hải had a short spell in France, in the colours of Pau FC in Ligue 2. It was an experiment worth learning from, whatever the result. Many other Vietnamese players have tried their luck in Japan, South Korea and Thailand.

What I observe from the outside is a pattern. Vietnamese players going abroad usually face three barriers: language, physicality, and a culture of competition. The third is the hardest. In the V.League, a good player can be cherished, prioritised, protected. In Europe, nobody cherishes you. You must fight for every minute, and you must endure being left on the bench for weeks without explanation.

This is why I believe sending young players abroad early matters, but it must come with psychological preparation. Sending an eighteen-year-old to Europe without a companion, without language support, without a fallback plan, usually ends with him returning after a year with his confidence damaged. And a young player who loses confidence is harder to restore than a young player who loses form.

The contrarian angle

Here I want to say what I believe is most misunderstood. When Vietnamese football fails at a major tournament, the reflex is to blame the coach, a player who made a mistake, or "weak mentality." When Vietnamese football succeeds, the reflex is to praise spirit, willpower, "Vietnamese character." Both reflexes ignore a drier reality: most of a football nation's results are decided by things that happen before the ball rolls, in places with no spectators.

I believe Vietnamese football does not lack talent. It does not lack money — or at least, money is growing. It does not lack passion either. What it lacks is a system that converts talent into results consistently, and a professional culture thick enough not to depend on the inspiration of a few exceptional individuals.

Put another way: Vietnamese football is good at producing moments, but not yet good at producing seasons. A moment is a match, a goal, one AFF Cup. A season is a ten-year cycle in which development, competition, recovery and transfers operate like a machine. Great football nations are not built on moments. They are built on seasons.

The most counterintuitive point I want to leave is this: dependence on exceptional individuals — whether a naturalised striker, a golden generation, or a brilliant coach — is a sign of youth, not of development. A mature football nation is one where, when the biggest star leaves, the system still stands. That is the measure I believe Vietnamese football will have to face in the coming decade.

Takeaway

When I left the training ground that day, the young player was still bending to pick up the ball. I do not know whether he will become a star. But I know that if Vietnamese football learns to see such rituals — and to turn them into part of the system, rather than the personal quality of a few — it will no longer depend on miracles to win trophies. Miracles are still beautiful. But a mature football nation does not need them.