V.League and Vietnam's Golden Generation: The Sustainability Question Behind the Applause

That night, I sat in a small coffee shop in Guangzhou, my eyes fixed on a flickering screen showing the match between Nam Dinh and Hanoi in the V.League. Beside me, a student from Guangdong asked in Mandarin: "Sir, is Vietnamese football really that good?" I did not answer right away. I opened my yellowed notebook — the one I have carried through 48 years of this work — and wrote a line in it: "Vietnamese football is winning with heart, but it risks losing with structure." That is the story I want to tell today, and I tell it with the full respect due to a football nation I have followed since my days as a young reporter in Belgrade.

When grey hair speaks about football, do not be quick to cover your ears — because the fire is still red. And my fire, at 64, is still hot enough to say plainly what many would rather not hear: Vietnam's golden generation — the generation of Quang Hai, Cong Phuong, Tien Linh, Hoang Duc — stands at a fork in the road that they themselves may not recognize. The problem is not talent. The problem is the system that is supposed to nourish it.

To understand why I say this, we must place Vietnamese football in its proper timeline. For more than a decade, the V.League has become one of the most emotionally compelling competitions in Southeast Asia. Hang Day, Thien Truong, Lach Tray — those names are not just venues to me, they are rituals. People go there not only to watch the ball roll, but to dissolve into something larger than themselves.

Behind those blazing stands, however, lies a reality rarely discussed: the financial base of most V.League clubs remains fragile. Broadcast revenue — the lifeblood of European leagues — is still small in Vietnam relative to the scale of its population and its passion. Commercial revenue depends heavily on a single main sponsor, and most clubs still survive on the backing of wealthy patrons who pour in money out of love for football rather than any sustainable business model.

I have covered 8 Olympic Games and 8 World Cups. I have seen football nations live on individual patronage, and I have seen them collapse. When the patron grows tired, when the parent company runs into trouble, the club vanishes like a dream at dawn. This is not Vietnam's tragedy alone. But for a football nation at the peak of its expectations, it is the greatest risk.

In 2026, in a beer hall in Guangzhou, I declared to my drinking friends that Croatia would reach the World Cup final. No one believed it. That year no one believed in Croatia, except me and a few drinking buddies. And I was right not because I am a good prophet, but because I looked at structure: a team with steel spirit and a generation of players built over many years, not over a few matches. What I remember most is not the victory, but that three days later I toured 12 beer halls across Guangzhou asking fans why they supported Croatia. They said: "A small team with a big heart." That heart — Vietnamese football has it. But a heart is not enough to pay wages, to build stadiums, to train the young.

Let me go into what I call the structural skeleton of Vietnamese football. I begin with what fans feel most keenly but few analyze thoroughly: the gap between the quality of the national team and the quality of the domestic league. Under foreign coaches, Vietnam's national team produced miracles — runners-up at the 2026 AFC U23 Championship in China, AFF Cup titles in 2026 and 2026, and a first-ever appearance in the third round of World Cup qualifying in Asia. But when you dissect that squad, you see something worrying: the supply of quality players comes from a very narrow set of academies and a very narrow set of clubs.

This is the crux I want you to remember: a football nation is only strong when its middle tier is strong, not when its peak shines. Vietnam has a shining peak. But the middle tier — mid-table V.League clubs, the youth league system, facilities in the provinces — is struggling. Young players get too few minutes. Key players are overworked. And when a star goes abroad, the parent club has no comparable replacement.

Tactically, I see a recurring pattern. V.League teams press high with intensity for the first 60 minutes, transition fast, then collapse in the final 30. I have watched the footage again and again, counting in my notebook: in some matches, the losing side gives the ball away in its own half twice as often in the second half as in the first. This is not the players' fault alone. It is a matter of base fitness, nutrition, sports science, and the fact that teams have only 14 or 15 players genuinely good enough to start.

I have seen the same thing in many small football nations. People love their club so much that they forget the club needs a medical system, a data system, a scouting system. Young people look at transfermarkt; I look at the eyes of players as they walk onto the pitch. And in the eyes of many V.League players, I see fatigue. Not the fatigue of not loving football. The fatigue of being forced to carry too much on one person's shoulders.

This brings me to the financial story. I want to talk about contract structures and wage bills, because that is the real story, not the cheap transfer rumors you read every day. In Vietnam, many clubs still operate with a wage-to-revenue ratio far beyond safe limits. When most income comes from a single sponsor, the club has no buffer. One unsuccessful season, one broken personal relationship, one struggling parent company — and the whole club falls into a spiral of unpaid wages, lost players, lost fans.

I have covered the Giro d'Italia and the Tour de France. There I learned that sustainability is not a media buzzword, but a condition for survival. A cycling team can win through one exceptional individual, but to survive across many seasons it needs structure. Football is the same. And here is what I want V.League administrators to hear: you cannot build a football nation on dreams. You must build it on balance sheets.

Now let me speak about governance, because this is where I see the most contradictions. The Vietnam Football Federation has done commendable work in professionalizing the national team and expanding international relations. But the relationship between the federation, the clubs and the league still carries friction. Crowded calendars. Overlapping interests between clubs and the national team. And above all, a question I consider the most important: who is responsible for a player's development at age 15, when he is no longer at the academy and not yet in the first team?

That gap — ages 15 to 20 — is where talents are dropped. I have seen it in the former Yugoslavia, in Serbia, in many places. The best boys at 15 are often not the ones who succeed at 22. The ones who succeed are those who meet the right environment, the right coach, the right opportunity, at the right moment. Vietnam is producing good players, but it is not producing enough opportunities for them to grow.

I want to tell a personal story. In 2026, at 55, I launched the "Goc Nong" podcast and immediately caused a stir by declaring that my hometown club needed to remove a host of players over 30 from its starting line-up after a heavy defeat. The local broadcaster called me a traitor. But I cited the numbers: the team ran a dozen kilometers less than its opponent, misplaced dozens of passes. The podcast's listeners surged overnight, and a group of young fans began calling me "the blacksmith of opinions." I tell this not to boast. I tell it to say: every piece I have written, every podcast I have made since then, contains at least three concrete figures to defend the argument. Hot, but grounded. That is my principle, and I apply it to Vietnamese football too.

Back to Vietnam. I believe three kinds of pressure weigh on this football nation, and I want to analyze them frankly.

The first pressure comes from media and fan expectations. After the national team's successes, expectations were pushed to a level disproportionate to the foundation. Every defeat becomes a crisis. Every coach is demanded to be sacked after a few winless games. That cycle — which I call the hot-cold cycle of Southeast Asian football — forces administrators into short-term decisions: change the coach, buy a star, burn money for immediate results. Sustainability is sacrificed for the immediate. And when the immediate does not come, people believe even more strongly that they must change more, faster.

I call this the winner's trap. When you win through emotion, you become addicted to that emotion. You forget that the football nations that succeed sustainably — Japan is the example I know best, since I was born there — built their systems over decades, not within a single decade. Japan has hundreds of players abroad not because of one golden generation, but because of a football education system stretching from schools to professional clubs. Vietnam can learn that, but learning does not mean copying. Learning means building its own version.

The second pressure comes from the brain drain. When Vietnamese players go abroad, it is good news for them personally, but bad news for the V.League if the parent club is not fairly compensated and has no replacement. Vietnam needs a transparent transfer mechanism, strictly enforced training compensation, and clubs that see the benefit in developing youth. Otherwise, the V.League will forever be a small pond from which the biggest fish always seek the river.

The third pressure comes from facilities and playing conditions. I have visited several stadiums across Asia, and I can say plainly: the quality of pitches, dressing rooms and medical rooms at many V.League grounds falls far short of what players deserve. This affects not only the quality of play but the safety of players. A country that loves football this much, that sings so loudly from the stands, deserves better stadiums.

Now to the part I enjoy most: talking about where I might be wrong. I always remind my listeners that a 64-year-old man is never certain. So where might I be wrong?

First, I may be underestimating the speed of change. In many football nations, everything moves slowly for years and then suddenly erupts, at the very moment few expect it. When I spoke of Croatia in 2026, I looked at structure, but that structure only became visible when a rare generation of talent matured at once. Vietnam could have such a generation that I have failed to notice. If so, I will be glad to have been wrong.

Second, I may be imposing a European template on a football culture that is different. Vietnamese football has its own identity: technical, skillful, high collective spirit, and strong community bonds. Perhaps Vietnam's path is not the path of Japan or Germany. Perhaps it is a hybrid model, where community and club intertwine in ways I — an outsider — do not fully understand. I am old enough to know that respect for what one does not understand is a virtue.

Third, and perhaps most important, I may be talking to you about risk while you are living through a historic moment. If Vietnam goes far at a World Cup, all my analysis of finance and structure will become mere whispers on the sidelines. And perhaps that would be right. Sometimes a golden moment is the nucleus of a golden future. But my experience of 48 years tells me: glory that comes fast usually leaves fast, unless there is a system behind it that knows how to hold on.

I remember the story of 15 Zoom sessions during the pandemic. Fifteen Zoom sessions during the pandemic taught me that football does not need a stadium, only people to watch with. We — friends of different ages, professions, nationalities — sat before screens, rewatched old matches, argued about tactics and history. Through those sessions I understood one thing: what keeps football alive is not the trophy, but the community. And Vietnam's fan community is one of the strongest and most loyal I have ever witnessed.

That community deserves to be answered with a serious system. Not with a few heroic moments and nothing more, but with a machine that runs steadily, where every young player knows his path does not end at 15, where every club knows that developing youth benefits itself, where every fan knows his club will survive even when the sponsor changes.

Vietnamese football has an opportunity many small football nations lack: it is at the peak of attention. But the peak of attention is a double-edged sword. It can be a launchpad, or it can be the summit after which there is only the slope on the other side. The difference lies in the decisions made over the next two or three years — decisions about structure, finance, youth development and governance. Those decisions are not glamorous, not front-page, not applause-generating. But they will determine whether the next generation has the opportunities the current golden generation has had.

If you are a Vietnamese fan, I have one small request. Do not only cheer for the national team. Go to the stadiums and watch the V.League. Follow the provincial clubs. Care about the young players who are not yet famous. Because the future of Vietnamese football is not decided at the big tournaments, but in the small stadiums, in the poorly attended matches, where an 18-year-old is learning how to become a man.

As for my prediction, I will state it plainly and it can be verified. Within the next three years, I believe Vietnamese football will have at least one player establishing himself in a top Asian or European league — and that will be good for the individual, but I fear the V.League will lack a sufficiently strong replacement, widening the gap between the national team and the domestic league. I also believe that if one V.League club genuinely invests in its academy over the same period, it will create a competitive advantage not only domestically but on the continental stage. And if both things happen together, you are looking at the start of a new cycle.

I may be wrong. I can always be wrong. But when grey hair speaks about football, do not be quick to cover your ears — because the fire is still red. The storm may stop, the ball may roll slowly, but we are still here. And a football nation — like a person — exists not because it never fell, but because it knows how to rise at the right moment. Vietnamese football is at the right moment. The only question is: does it know where it is standing.