Vietnamese Football and the Lives Behind the Scoreboard

VIETNAMESE FOOTBALL AND THE LIVES BEHIND THE SCOREBOARD

I. A LONELY APPLAUSE

A match without spectators is not without sound; there are footsteps, a coach shouting, and the sound of frightened hearts. I wrote that line into my notebook many years ago, but it was not until an afternoon when the domestic league had to be suspended because of a pandemic that I truly heard it with my own flesh and blood.

That day, the stadium was almost empty. Only a few figures remained in the stands: an old security guard sitting by the flagpole, a ball boy of about twelve, and a man sweeping fallen leaves at the entrance. No drum, no loudspeaker, no roar from tens of thousands of fans. There was only the sound of studded boots scraping the grass, a goalkeeper calling out his defensive line, and a ball striking the post that sounded dry and chilling.

I sat in the third row, alone, and for the first time in more than thirty years of working in this profession, I heard so clearly the sigh of a substitute player when he realized he would not be sent on. It was a very small sound, almost swallowed by the vast emptiness of the stadium. But it was precisely that overlooked sound that stayed with me the longest.

People remember the goal, but I write about the man who gifted that goal to the world with a mistaken touch. And in Vietnam, a country of nearly one hundred million people, where football is the gentlest religion and also the most enduring, those who gift goals with a mistaken touch are countless — it is just that no one counts them.

II. CONTEXT: A FOOTBALL CULTURE THAT LIVES ON MEMORY

Based on my experience of watching matches over three decades, I can say that Vietnamese football runs on a kind of energy that never appears on any federation's balance sheet: collective memory. The 222 million does not sit on a balance sheet; it sits in the hearts of millions. In Vietnam, that number is not the 222 million euros of a transfer deal, but the hundreds of millions of small memories passed from one generation to the next through evenings in front of a screen, through street calls, through applause that rises in the same rhythm across all three regions of the country.

Vietnamese football has passed through many layers of emotion. In the 1990s, the national team began to appear regularly in regional tournaments. In the 2000s, fans learned to believe in the big matches. But it was not until 2026, when the Vietnam U23 team reached the final of the AFC U23 Championship in Changzhou, China, under falling snow, that this country's football truly entered a new era of belief. It was a winter evening on which millions of people wept together. They wept with happiness, but they also wept for something deeper: they realized they could hurt for a team, and that hurt was not meaningless.

Coach Park Hang-seo, a South Korean, arrived in Vietnam at the end of 2026 and quickly became part of this country's football family. He did not merely teach tactics; he taught them how to get back up. Fans did not call him by his title; they called him by an affectionate name, as one calls a family member. And when Vietnam won the 2026 AFF Cup, this country took to the streets not to celebrate a trophy, but to confirm to itself that it still knew how to cheer.

Yet behind all those moments lies another layer of truth that is rarely told. It is the story of the people who make a match happen but never appear on the scoreboard. And if we remember only the goals, we will forever understand only half of the game.

III. THE CORE: THOSE WHO ARE NEVER NAMED

1. The ball boy and the decisive touch no one credits

In modern football, everything is measured: passes, distance covered, expected goals. But there is one metric no system can measure: the reaction time of a ball boy. Whether a ball is returned to the pitch quickly or slowly can decide a counterattack. There are matches in which victory depends on whether a twelve-year-old understands the moment.

I once sat near the touchline and watched such a boy. In a domestic match, with the home side trailing and only minutes left, that boy returned the ball to the pitch at the speed of a firefighter. No one clapped for him. No camera pointed at him. But without those two seconds, the equalizer would never have come.

The people who make the moment are usually named in no record, and precisely for that reason they are the most honest proof that football is a collective organism, not an individual contest.

1. The leaf sweeper and the atmosphere of a stadium

There is a man at a stadium I visited many times. He sweeps leaves every morning, before anyone arrives. He told me he can tell which team will win simply by looking at the fallen leaves. It sounds strange, but he had his own logic: in the days before a big match, players come to train earlier, and the leaves crushed in a particular corner of the pitch will reveal what he needs to know.

This is not superstition. It is living knowledge. Vietnamese football is run by many people like him: people without glamorous contracts, without names on the electronic board, but who hold the daily breath of a team in their hands. They are the guards, the water sellers, the kit washers, the light repairers. And when a match ends, they are the ones who stay behind to clean up.

1. Sports medicine and the curtain of secrecy

In Vietnam, as in many places, information about player injuries is often kept secret. Clubs publish only what suits them. Fans and media are left in the dark: they see a player absent, they see a name vanish from the lineup, but they do not know why. They can only guess.

I once witnessed a young player announced as having a "minor injury" who returned after nearly a year. During that time, fans kept asking questions, but no one answered satisfactorily. That silence is not merely a communications strategy; it is also a way of protecting an asset's value. An injured player can reduce his transfer value. So the truth is delayed, bent, or simply buried.

When medical confidentiality becomes a negotiating tool, fans are no longer part of the match; they become the audience of a play they fund but are never allowed to read.

1. Women's football and the forgotten equation

In recent years, Vietnamese women's football has achieved notable results in regional and continental competitions. The national women's team has repeatedly won medals at the SEA Games and taken part in Asian tournaments. But achievement does not mean recognition.

I have attended many women's matches in almost empty stands. The women play with an intensity in no way inferior to their male colleagues, yet they receive a fraction of the attention. Sponsors tend to arrive late and leave early. They come when an event is big enough to write into a corporate social responsibility report, and they leave when it ends.

The commercialization of women's tournaments in Vietnam, in the end, is not an investment decision; it is a communications exercise in corporate social responsibility, where women players are used as props for a story that is not theirs.

This does not mean there are no sincere efforts. There are coaches, officials, and fans who genuinely love women's football. But they are rowing a small boat on a great river. And every time the women's team wins, people speak of "national pride" while forgetting a simpler question: what do these players live on, and how will they live after retirement?

1. The era of empty stadiums and a lesson in sound

In 2026, when the pandemic forced leagues around the world to pause, Vietnamese football was not outside that vortex. Domestic leagues were postponed, international matches rescheduled. During that time, I began to notice the sounds that are normally drowned out by the roar of the crowd.

Football without spectators is a concept I have pursued for a long time, as a genre of its own. When the stadium is empty, you hear things you never noticed before: studded boots scraping the grass, a goalkeeper calling his line, a referee's whistle sounding dry and cold, a player shouting at a teammate in anger. And above all, you hear the sound of frightened hearts.

A match without spectators is not without sound; there are footsteps, a coach shouting, and the sound of frightened hearts.

I remember a match in which the visiting striker stood over a penalty, and in the absolute silence of the stadium, I heard him take a deep breath. It was the sound of a human being facing the greatest fear of his life, with no crowd to shield him. That moment taught me that football, at its deepest layer, is not a team sport. It is a lonely confrontation between a person and himself.

1. Transfers: hunting an open ending

Every transfer window, I am swept up in an indescribable emotion. I hunt transfer news as if hunting an open ending: knowing this is a farewell, but never knowing the finale. In Vietnam, every time a player goes abroad to play, the whole country seems to hold its breath. They are not just going to play football; they carry the hope of a football culture searching for its place on the continental map.

Nguyen Quang Hai, one of the most talented players of the golden generation, once moved abroad to play. His every step was watched, dissected, and sometimes judged too harshly. Vietnamese fans have a particular habit: they love their players so much that they turn them into symbols, then place on their shoulders a weight no one could carry.

When a young player leaves, I always think of what he leaves behind: family, friends, a small city, a pitch where he trained since he was a child. I hunt transfer news as if hunting an open ending: knowing this is a farewell, but never knowing the finale.

1. Own goals: where legend refuses to be consecrated

In every big match, there is always a moment no one wants to remember. It is the own goal. People usually call the scorer a villain. But I always look at his shoulders, not at the scoreboard.

An own goal is football's way of reminding us that legend does not choose whom to consecrate.

I once witnessed a young defender score an own goal in a decisive match, and afterward he sank to the ground in the middle of the pitch, both hands covering his face. No one among the tens of thousands of spectators could understand that feeling. The next day, his name appeared in newspapers everywhere with the word villain. But few knew that he had played the whole match with a pain in his knee, that he had tried until the final second, and that he himself was the one who had saved his team from three goals earlier.

Vietnamese football, like football anywhere, has a very short and very cruel memory. It remembers the goal but forgets the unrecorded efforts. And in that brief memory, people like that young defender are turned into a black dot, when they deserve to be remembered as a human being who dared to stand up after falling.

IV. THE CONTRARIAN ANGLE: THE BLIND SPOT OF COLLECTIVE MEMORY

The time has come for me to say something that may displease many. Vietnamese football is building its collective memory on victories. We remember the championships, the goals of a lifetime, the moments of bursting onto the streets. But we hardly remember the defeats. And it is precisely in those defeats that the truth of this football culture lies deeper.

People remember the goal, but I write about the man who gifted that goal to the world with a mistaken touch. Because a football culture can only grow if it dares to look at its own wound, not merely at the scar on its chest when the team lifts the cup.

In Vietnam, fans have a fierce and sometimes blind love. We are ready to forgive a player who loses form, but we are harsh with a coach who fails to meet expectations. We praise a beautiful goal but rarely remember the credit of the creator. We invest in men's football but treat women's football as an obligation. And we praise the sporting spirit, yet are ready to turn a person who makes a mistake into the villain of an entire nation.

This is the greatest blind spot of collective memory: we remember what we want to remember, not what actually happened. And a football culture that remembers only victories will always be surprised by defeat.

There is one more thing that must be said. Vietnamese football faces a risk few notice: professionalization, if it goes the wrong way, can turn young players into products of an assembly line, where the individual self is smoothed to fit the mold of digital training. When every metric is measured, when every action is recorded, players may learn to play safe instead of playing boldly. And a football culture afraid of making mistakes is a football culture that will never produce people capable of creating moments.

But I do not want to end with a warning. I want to end with an image.

V. WHAT REMAINS

That night, after the match ended, I stayed in the stands for a long time. The stadium was empty, the lights gradually going out, and in the corner of the pitch, the ball boy was still there, collecting the last balls. He did not know the spectators had all gone. He only knew his work was not yet done.

If one day Vietnamese football stands at the top of the continent, I hope people will still remember that boy — the one who collected the balls no one wanted to collect, on a night no one wanted to remember.

Because a football culture is not measured by the trophies on the shelf, but by the people who stay behind after the lights go out. And the final question I want to send to readers, those who have accompanied me through all these years, is not how many matches the Vietnamese team will win. That question is: when the lights go out, will we still stay?