Vietnamese Football and the Paint of Expectation: The Cracks After the Trophy in Bangkok

On the night of January 5, 2026, I sat in front of a screen in Beijing, nearly four thousand kilometres from the Rajamangala Stadium. Nguyen Xuan Son was carried off on a stretcher in the first half, his face still wearing the blank look of a man who had not yet understood what had just happened to his leg. Fifteen minutes later, the Vietnamese players were still running, still pressing, still scoring. When the referee blew the final whistle, the second leg finished 3-2, 5-3 on aggregate, and Vietnam had its third Southeast Asian title after 2026 and 2026.

What I remember most from that night is the silence on the coaching bench. Kim Sang-sik stood motionless for a long time before shaking hands with his players. A coach who had just won the biggest match of his career, and for thirty seconds, he did not smile.

It took me thirty years to understand that the golden boy does not rise up; it is the paint of our expectation that begins to crack. Vietnamese football over the past seven years is the story of a very beautiful coat of paint, applied again and again, and of the cracks underneath that nobody wants to touch.

The chronology has been scrambled

In October 2026, Park Hang-seo took charge of the Vietnam national team. Four months later, in Changzhou, Vietnam's U23 side reached the final of the AFC U23 Championship and lost to Uzbekistan in extra time, in the snow. I was in Beijing then, sitting in a cafe in the Chaoyang district, listening to a group of Vietnamese students scream at a phone. An entire generation of Vietnamese fans began that night.

Then came 2026: AFC U23 runners-up, an Asian Games semi-final, and an AFF Cup title after ten years of waiting. Then 2026: an Asian Cup quarter-final, and the first SEA Games men's football gold since 2026. Four years, four milestones, one coach. After that, almost everything stood still.

In 2026, Vietnam reached the third round of World Cup qualifying for the first time, taking four points from ten matches, including a 3-1 win over China at My Dinh during Tet and a 1-1 draw away to Japan in Saitama. Those results were beautiful in the way a photograph is beautiful. But they also drew a very clear boundary: Vietnam can trouble a big team for one match, not for ten.

In March 2026, in the second round of qualification for the 2026 World Cup, Group F, Vietnam lost 0-1 to Indonesia in Jakarta and then 0-3 at My Dinh. After the second defeat, Philippe Troussier's contract was terminated. In May, Kim Sang-sik was appointed. In early January 2026, the team won the ASEAN title on Thai soil.

A football nation that changed head coaches three times in seven years, after barely changing for twenty. A football nation that lost shockingly within its region and won the region within the same twelve-month cycle. And still no answer to the old question: what tier does Vietnam actually belong to in Asia?

The "almost" model is not an accident

Looking back at the record since 2026, a pattern hits you immediately. AFC U23 runners-up in 2026. Asian Cup quarter-finalists in 2026. Third round of World Cup qualifying in 2026. SEA Games bronze in 2026. Southeast Asian champions in 2026. And elimination in the second round of 2026 World Cup qualifying. In every major tournament, Vietnam reaches the second-to-last step and stops.

Stopping once is an accident. Stopping seven times at the same altitude is structure. Vietnam's ceiling lies in its ability to convert potential into results when a match enters its decisive phase, and that ceiling is not about mentality; it is about squad depth.

Meanwhile, the neighbourhood has moved. Indonesia naturalised a wave of heritage players, went deep in 2026 World Cup qualifying and came within a very short distance of a finals ticket. Thailand has held its club-level standing with sides regularly reaching the knockout rounds of Asian competition. Malaysia has taken the same naturalisation route. Vietnam won Southeast Asia, but the foundation under that win is narrowing season by season.

The domestic league: a league of owners

There is a detail rarely mentioned. In the 2026-2026 season, Thep Xanh Nam Dinh won V.League 1, the club's first national title since 2026. Thirty-nine years. A provincial club, backed by a textile group, beating the giants of the capital.

That story is beautiful. But it also reveals the structure of the league: V.League does not run on revenue; it runs on the patience of a handful of owners. In Vietnam, a club survives because a corporation stands behind it, not because of television rights, not because of matchday ticketing, not because of shirt commercialisation. When the owner changes his mind, the club disappears. Vietnamese fans have watched that happen more times than they care to remember.

Based on my experience watching matches at Hang Day and Thien Truong stadiums in recent seasons, I see a repeating pattern: young players come on when the team is winning and are pulled off when the team needs points. The owner protects his asset. And the owner's asset is the immediate result, not a nineteen-year-old who will mature in four years.

VAR was introduced to V.League 1 in 2026. It helps. But I still hold what I have always thought about VAR: the space for subjective judgement inside VAR is larger than people believe, and the phrase "clear and obvious error" is a vague clause written by people who need it to be vague. Once a referee must choose which camera angle to rewind, the decision has already become a choice. In Vietnam, that means every matchday produces an argument, and every argument makes fans trust the system a little less.

The striker problem, and the price of the naturalisation fix

There is a question Vietnamese football has failed to answer for twenty years: who scores?

For years, the answer was a domestic striker who played well but lacked the stature to decide big matches. Then Rafaelson Bezerra Fernandes arrived at Nam Dinh, became V.League's top scorer, was naturalised, and became Nguyen Xuan Son. At the 2026 ASEAN Championship he was the team's main attacking reference, scored in the first leg of the final at Viet Tri, and was carried off in the second leg.

Let me be clear: this is a good story. A Brazilian chooses Vietnam, learns Vietnamese, sings the anthem, scores goals. There is nothing to criticise. But if the national team of a football nation with tens of millions of supporters has to borrow a striker from elsewhere to win its region, that is both a solution and a confession. A solution for this season. A confession about twenty years without producing a regional-class centre-forward.

Indonesia has gone much further down that road, and it has reasons. Naturalisation is a legitimate tool used across the world. Japan used it, France uses it, Germany uses it. The problem is not the tool. The problem is what the tool is replacing.

The golden generation stopped

The Hoang Anh Gia Lai - JMG academy opened in 2026. The PVF centre was founded in 2026. Nutifood, Viettel and others followed. Ten years later, the names Nguyen Cong Phuong, Nguyen Tuan Anh, Luong Xuan Truong, Vu Van Thanh and Nguyen Van Toan appeared at the same time, and the whole country believed the mine had finally been found.

Theirs, honestly examined, is one shared arc. Nguyen Cong Phuong went to Mito HollyHock in Japan, to Sint-Truiden in Belgium, to Incheon United in Korea. Luong Xuan Truong played for Incheon United and Gangwon FC, then Buriram United in Thailand. Nguyen Tuan Anh had a spell at Yokohama FC. Doan Van Hau was loaned to SC Heerenveen. Nguyen Quang Hai joined Pau FC in Ligue 2 in 2026.

None of them failed as individuals. But that generation peaked at twenty-two, in a snowbound tournament in China, and never touched that altitude again. That is worth saying, and it has nothing to do with talent.

It has to do with environment. In Vietnam, a twenty-two-year-old who plays well immediately becomes a media icon. A media icon has sponsorships, a fan page, a schedule. And an icon is never pushed out of his comfort zone. There is no internal competition harsh enough, no pressure to improve, no coach willing to leave a star on the bench for two straight rounds because of form.

An empty stadium does not take away the shouting; it only makes us hear more clearly the sigh of the coaching bench. Here, the stadium is not empty. The stands are full, the fans still sing, and precisely for that reason the sigh is drowned out.

Time does not solve problems by itself

People often say Vietnamese football needs more time. I have heard that since 2026. Seventeen years.

Time does not solve problems. Institutions solve problems. A league with real revenue, a federation with real authority, a youth system with real outputs, and a mechanism that forces young players onto the pitch because nobody is protecting them.

There is no great prophecy, only an old man weathered enough to see the crack that the crowd deliberately ignores.

Where I could be wrong

There are several ways I could be wrong, and I want to name them all.

I may be judging the ASEAN Cup with a colder eye than it deserves. A title changes the national mood, changes sponsors, and changes whether an eight-year-old in Nghe An chooses football or not. None of that shows up in a ranking table.

Then again, naturalisation may be the road itself. Japan did it in the 1990s and now sits among Asia's elite. If Vietnam naturalises three or four more players in weak positions, results could arrive far faster than waiting for academies.

And I may be using 2026 as a benchmark when it was a historical anomaly. A football nation can win its region and never reach a World Cup. Most football nations live exactly like that, and they are fine.

Even the neighbourhood may face the same problems. Indonesia naturalises heavily but has not necessarily built anything lasting. Thailand has waited a long time for a new generation. Everyone is improvising.

The possibility that troubles me most: perhaps comfort is not a disease but the mature state of a football nation that has found its place in the region and does not need to chase dreams that are too far away.

But if comfort is maturity, then why, after every defeat at My Dinh, do we hear the same sound? The sound of plastic seats folding up, very fast, very orderly, before the referee has blown the final whistle.

What I am waiting for

I will state plainly what I am waiting for, so that it can be checked.

If, by mid-2026, the national team squad still contains no domestic striker under twenty-three who has scored more than five goals in a V.League season, then Vietnam will win Southeast Asia once more, and will once again stand outside the door of the 2030 World Cup. If that happens, I hope nobody will say we need more time.

And if Vietnam fails to come through the third round of qualifying for the 2027 Asian Cup and reach Saudi Arabia, then the question for the country's football leadership will no longer be who the coach is, but what we sold off over the past ten years.

As for me, I will still sit in front of a screen in Beijing on every evening the national team plays. Not to watch a victory. But to stay behind, after the shouting stops, and read the face of a player questioning himself.