V.League and the Forgotten Ones: When the Sound of Boots in Training Is Worth More Than a Blockbuster Signing

The Wednesday afternoon training session at Lạch Tray ran twenty minutes longer than usual, and for those twenty minutes, nobody on the coaching staff said a single word about goals. They only spoke about distance. The distance between the two centre-backs when the team loses the ball. The distance between the holding midfielder and the centre-back pairing when the opponent switches play. Distance — a word that sounds dry — is the thing that decides the fate of an entire season.

The sea wind blew in from the Cấm River, carrying the smell of salt and wet grass. One young player stayed behind after everyone else. He did not practise shooting. He practised retreating — retreating exactly seven metres, turning, then running back. Those seven metres are the distance he has to cover when his team counter-attacks. Nobody asked him to do it. He did it himself, for forty minutes, after his team-mates had already gone to the dressing room.

I go to the ground not to watch who scores, but to watch who gets up after a missed shot. That afternoon, the last man standing was not the top scorer of the previous season.

Over the last four matches, Hải Phòng's PPDA has fallen from 11.4 to 8.9 — meaning the port-city club is pressing higher, harder, and accepting greater risk. That is a tactical signal far more noteworthy than any blockbuster signing the transfer market is trying to sell.

Context: an annual season without heroes

The annual season of Vietnamese football has a characteristic that few people notice. It is not decided by the big matches, but by the small ones played at seven in the evening on a weekday, in front of a few thousand spectators, on pitches that are not always level. That is where the season is forged.

Looking at the V.League 1 table, it is easy to be fooled by the points gap between the top and the bottom. That gap always looks wide. But if you break it down match by match, the picture changes completely. The provincial clubs — Hải Phòng, Thanh Hóa, Sông Lam Nghệ An, Bình Dương — have not grown weaker. They are simply written about less. The media focuses on where the money is, and the money flows to three or four major cities.

The three clubs leading transfer spending in recent seasons are Hà Nội FC, Công An Hà Nội and Thể Công Viettel. That is understandable. They have the budgets, the brand appeal, and the ability to pay high wages. But a season is not measured by the money spent; it is measured by the points won on the pitch. And on the pitch, that gap narrows considerably.

I have followed the V.League across many seasons, and there is an almost unchanging rule. Clubs that spend heavily often struggle when they have to play on poor pitches, under the pressure of small stands, against opponents with nothing to lose. Those matches are not glamorous. But they decide who wins the title and who is relegated.

Nam Định won the V.League 1 in the 2026-2026 season — their first title since 2026. That is a story worth thinking about. A club outside the biggest spenders took the crown, thanks to a cohesive collective and a coach who understood his own limits. Vietnamese football witnessed it, then quickly forgot.

The national team offered a similar signal. Vietnam won the 2026 ASEAN Championship (Mitsubishi Electric Cup) in January 2026, beating Thailand 5-3 over two legs in the final. Not everyone in that squad was a star from a big club. There were names from provincial sides — people rarely mentioned, who played their roles exactly as required.

The annual season therefore carries its own rhythm. It demands patience. It does not allow you to look only at loud signings. It forces you to read the undercurrents — the currents of fitness, of tactics, of refereeing controversies, of players slowly sinking into oblivion.

I choose to write about the submerged part.

The arms race and the trap of numbers

Every transfer window, the big clubs race to spend. A foreign striker arrives with a fee rumoured to reach millions of dollars. A domestic midfielder is fought over by the big clubs, his price pushed to three times what it was two seasons ago. The media reports, the fans comment, and the atmosphere becomes lively.

But that race is largely an arms race of brands. The big clubs buy players to assert their status, to reassure their fans, to show they are still a force. The true sporting value of those deals is usually smaller than the price the press attaches to them.

The genuinely valuable deals are not the million-dollar moves of the giants, but the quiet transfers of the small clubs — where every dong spent has to return a profit on the pitch.

Look at how a provincial club builds its squad. It cannot compete on wages. It cannot promise continental football. So what does it do? It looks for players the big clubs have discarded — young men never given a chance, veterans dismissed as finished, players with fitness problems but still possessing skill. It buys cheap, and it gives opportunity.

This approach sounds simple, but it requires a very sharp eye. A small club cannot afford many mistakes. It has no money to correct them. Its scouting must therefore be more precise, more data-driven, and more attuned to the player as a person.

I once watched a provincial club turn down a foreign striker with a good scoring record in a lower division, purely because his sprint speed was below what their counter-attacking system required. The coaching staff told me they would rather miss a goal than break their defensive structure. That decision was never reported. But it was correct.

That is what the big clubs often forget. When you have money, it is easy to buy a star. But a star does not automatically create a system. A good player placed in the wrong role is worse than an average player placed in the right one. Football is a sport of systems, and a system is built from small bricks.

The forgotten ones

In 2026, I was the only young reporter allowed to sit by the fence of Lạch Tray for three months. During that summer's transfer window, I discovered a 21-year-old midfielder being pushed down to the First Division, after playing only 47 minutes in the V.League all season.

His name, I will call him Hòa. Hòa was not a bad player. He simply did not fit the team's way of playing. The coach at the time wanted a midfielder who fought hard for the ball, while Hòa was the type who kept the rhythm, passed short, and moved intelligently. He was undervalued because he was unsuitable, not because he was poor.

Instead of writing a rumour, I stayed in the dressing room for two hours after every session. I recorded how Hòa packed away his boots. He always wiped them clean before putting them in his bag, even when the whole team had already left. I recorded the whisper of the captain, the only man who stayed to talk with Hòa. I recorded the embrace of the familiar security guard, a man who had watched Hòa grow up from the youth team.

My 3,200-word piece ran on the club's website. It did not talk about tactics. It talked about a human being being forgotten. Afterwards, Hòa found a new home at a First Division club, and gradually returned. That story taught me something: people may forget your name, but they cannot forget the sound of your boots on the pitch.

The forgotten ones are not people without talent. The forgotten ones are people with talent who were never placed in the right spot, at the right time, in the right system.

In every V.League club, there are always a few names like Hòa. They sit on the bench, train hard, and wait for a chance that never comes. They do not appear in the papers. They do not have good agents. They are not mentioned in the commentary. But they are still there, every day, on the training pitch.

I go to the ground not to watch who scores, but to watch who gets up after a missed shot. And those who get up are usually the forgotten ones.

The goalkeeper waiting in an empty goal

In the summer of 2026, the pandemic closed the stadiums. I stood in the empty stands of Lạch Tray, looking down at the green pitch with not a soul on it. The feeling was strange. Football had lost its sound, and had become like a ceremony with no congregation.

At that time, a 34-year-old veteran goalkeeper, I will call him Long, had just suffered a ligament injury. He fell into a mild depression, not because of the injury, but because he had to play in an atmosphere without applause. For a goalkeeper, applause is what nourishes confidence. Without it, he lost his footing.

I persuaded the coaching staff to let me interview Long by video, fifteen sessions in a row. I did not film. I only listened and took notes. He told me about sleepless nights, about the fear of the ball, about the feeling of standing in front of the goal and not knowing whether he still deserved to be there.

My piece, titled Tears Without a Crowd, ran in a football magazine. It did not analyse tactics. It made no predictions. It simply told the story of a man trying to hold on to his profession. After it appeared, Long received thousands of messages of encouragement, and the club decided to extend his contract by one year.

Lạch Tray is empty of people, but the goal still holds the silhouette of a goalkeeper sitting and waiting.

Long's story reminded me that football is not only what happens in ninety minutes. It is also what happens in the silences between matches, in the dressing room, in the mind of a player struggling with himself. And those silences are rarely written about.

Data does not lie, but the table does

I have spent most of my career reading data reports. And I learned one thing: data does not lie, but the way people present data can deceive. The league table is one such form of presentation.

The table only tells you results. It does not tell you process. A team in third place may be playing worse than a team in eighth. A team that wins three in a row may be lucky, and a team that loses three in a row may be unlucky.

To truly understand, I look at process metrics. Expected goals (xG) show the quality of chances a team creates. Expected goals against (xGA) show the quality of chances a team allows. PPDA shows pressing intensity. These metrics, tracked across many matches, paint a far more honest picture than the table.

A team can win through luck in one match, but it cannot win through luck across a season. Process, not results, is what forecasts the future.

For example, a provincial club might rank twelfth in xG created but fourth in xGA allowed. That means it defends far better than its league position suggests. If it improves its finishing, it will climb. Conversely, a big club might top the xG charts but sit mid-table in xGA, and will struggle against opponents who know how to counter-attack.

I regularly watch V.League matches, and one thing caught my attention this annual season. Many provincial clubs have significantly improved their defensive metrics. They no longer defend negatively. They defend proactively — organised pressing, covering space, and quick transitions. It is a tactical step forward that few people recognise.

This improvement does not come from buying stars. It comes from coaching. Vietnamese coaches are becoming increasingly skilled at organising teams without expensive players. They learn from international football, apply ideas suited to their conditions, and build patiently across seasons.

That is why I say the true value of a club is not in its blockbuster signings. It is in the quality of its coaching, the stability of its system, and its ability to give the right people a chance.

The dressing room does not lie

There is one place where every number becomes meaningless, and that is the dressing room. In the dressing room, you cannot hide the truth. You cannot conceal discontent. You cannot pretend everything is fine.

The dressing room does not lie. It only stays silent just long enough for you to hear the truth.

I have been in many dressing rooms. I have learned to read them. A healthy dressing room has laughter, teasing, music. A dressing room with problems is silent in a different way. People sit further apart. People look down at their phones instead of into each other's eyes. The captain speaks less.

At provincial clubs, the dressing room is often more cohesive than at the big clubs. That is an interesting paradox. When you do not have many stars, you have to rely on each other more. When your wages are lower, you envy your team-mates less. When you come from the same hometown, you have more to share.

This has a direct tactical meaning. A cohesive collective will run more for one another. They will cover for each other when someone makes a mistake. They will hold their structure even when tired. These factors do not appear in the statistics, but they decide the outcome of difficult matches.

The big clubs often underestimate this strength. They think a squad full of stars will automatically be stronger than a cohesive collective. Reality says otherwise. Football has proven it many times. A collective that understands each other will beat a group of talented but disconnected individuals.

Every transfer window is a parting. Those who stay are quieter than those who leave. When a star leaves, the dressing room loses a pillar, but may also find a new balance. When a forgotten player stays, he carries a hunger the star no longer has.

Moscow has snow, Hải Phòng has sea wind

In 2026, I was sent to Russia for the World Cup at the age of 27. I arrived in Moscow with a recorder and a notebook. I did not think I would find anything special. But I did.

In the fan zone in Moscow, I met a 63-year-old man from Kiến An, Hải Phòng. He had walked hundreds of kilometres across countries to support the national team, carrying an old flag from 2026. He did not speak English. I spent two days interpreting for him, and told his story on the World Cup website.

Moscow has snow, Hải Phòng has sea wind. Football brings them both into the same story.

That piece was read by fifty thousand people. But what I learned was not in the number. What I learned is that football can connect spaces that seem unrelated. A man in Kiến An and a tournament in Moscow can meet in the same story, if you know how to tell it.

Since then, every piece I write searches for a thread connecting a small individual to football's global village. I believe that is the best way to tell the story of this sport. Not through the stars, but through ordinary people swept up in something larger than themselves.

In 2026, I went to Qatar for the World Cup. But I did not only commentate. I brought recording equipment, and I called back to Hải Phòng to organise a joint viewing at two in the morning for two hundred fans, on a small-sided football pitch. Japan beat Germany 2-1. I recorded the sound of sobbing, of breaking water bottles, and a young man crying because he missed his late father — the man who had taught him to watch football.

My report contained seventeen direct quotations from the people watching together. Not a single line about tactics. And it is the piece I am proudest of.

Those experiences shaped how I see the V.League. I do not see it through the table. I see it through the people in it. And the most interesting people, to me, are usually the least mentioned.

The contrarian angle: what outsiders misunderstand

There is a common belief among Vietnamese football fans. It holds that provincial clubs are just small clubs, without ambition, forever behind the giants. This belief is repeated so often that it becomes a default truth.

But it is wrong.

The truth is that provincial clubs are growing stronger, not weaker. They do not compete with money. They compete with intelligence. They build their clubs more sustainably, around players the giants overlook. And in many cases, they are playing smarter football.

What outsiders misunderstand is the nature of success in football. People believe success comes from buying the best players. But the history of world football shows the opposite. The clubs that succeed sustainably are those with the best systems, not the most expensive squads.

Provincial clubs are not underdogs waiting to be beaten. They are the people quietly rewriting how a small club can survive and grow in an increasingly competitive league.

Another misunderstanding is that fans only care about stars. This is also wrong. Local fans care about their club, about the players whose names they know, about the people they can meet at the market or the coffee shop. They do not need a foreign star to love their club.

I have seen this at Lạch Tray. When a local player scores, the stands erupt in a different way than when a foreign star scores. There is a bond, a pride, a sense of belonging. That is something money cannot buy.

And here is the most counter-intuitive point. The big clubs, in their arms race, may be weakening the national game. When they concentrate money in a few clubs, they create an unbalanced league. An unbalanced league is less competitive, less attractive, and ultimately less able to develop talent.

The real strength of Vietnamese football is not in three or four big clubs. It is in the dozens of provincial clubs quietly working, training, and giving opportunities to the forgotten.

Signals to watch

For the rest of the annual season, there are a few signals I will be watching.

The first is the defensive quality of the provincial clubs. If the trend of improving xGA continues, we will see smaller clubs taking more points off the giants. That will make the title race more interesting.

The second is the development of young players. When big clubs buy stars, they often block young players' chances. But when small clubs are forced to use young players for budget reasons, they may be inadvertently nurturing the next generation of Vietnamese football.

The third is dressing-room health. A provincial club can lose its cohesion if it loses its identity. If it tries to imitate the giants, it will fail. If it holds to its own path, it will succeed.

The fourth is the transfer market. The quiet deals of small clubs are often more noteworthy than the loud deals of the giants. A player forgotten at a big club can become a pillar at a small one. That is where real value is created.

What I believe

I believe Vietnamese football is at an important moment. The league is growing, money is flowing in, and attention is rising. But this growth can go in two directions.

The first is the direction of arms races. The giants buy stars, the small clubs weaken, the league becomes unbalanced, and ultimately the overall quality of football declines.

The second is the direction of sustainable growth. Small clubs are given opportunities, young players develop, the league becomes more competitive, and the overall quality of football rises.

I believe in the second direction. Not because it is easy, but because it is right.

And I believe the people who make the second direction happen are not the stars bought for millions of dollars. They are the ones practising the seven-metre retreat after their team-mates have gone to the dressing room. They are the goalkeepers waiting in empty goals. They are the players pushed down to the First Division who refuse to give up.

They are the forgotten ones. And I write about them, every day.

Takeaway: the next internal signal

Over the next few matches, pay attention to one small thing. Pay attention to the substitute who comes on in the seventieth minute. Pay attention to how he runs, how he challenges, how he reacts after a misplaced pass.

Sometimes, in those final minutes, you will see a club's future. Not in the table, but in the eyes of a man trying not to be forgotten.

Vietnamese football will be shaped by the people the table does not remember. And if you want to know how this season will end, go to a provincial ground on a midweek evening. There, in the quiet of a few thousand spectators, you will hear the true heartbeat of football.

I am only the one listening to that heartbeat. And I will keep listening, until there is no one left to listen to.