Vietnam's Young Football Is Winning on 'Steel': Why I Worry About the Tactical Structure

When the final whistle blew in Samut Prakan, Vietnam's U23 players rushed into each other's arms as if they had touched something great. They had just beaten Thailand U23 to reach the final of the Southeast Asian U23 Championship. In the stands, thousands of supporters sang familiar anthems. I sat in the press area, opening the old notebook that has followed me for 15 years, trying to find what I should celebrate amid the swirling emotions. People look at the table to see who leads; I look at the bottom to find who is about to disappear. At this moment, I do not see any team about to vanish from the U23 Southeast Asian table. But I see a disease spreading through an entire generation of young players, called "winning on spirit," and no one dares to name it. The context is easy to satisfy. Within less than two years, Vietnamese football has achieved remarkable results: the national team won the ASEAN Championship 2026, and U23 Vietnam won the U23 ASEAN Championship 2026. Private football academies have sprouted like mushrooms. Names like Nguyen Dinh Bac, Bui Vinh Hao, or Khue Van Khang are chased across forums, and some clubs are ready to spend tens of billions of dong on players who have not even played 50 professional matches. Even the driest investors have started asking questions about profits from youth training, a sign that football is becoming a business equation. It all looks like a golden era is forming. Only, gold cannot be built with a single material: emotion. I spent weeks after the title reviewing footage of the national youth team and V.League clubs using many U23 players. The data I collected does not support the rosy picture painted by the media. In the last 12 matches of U23 Vietnam in official tournaments, the team scored 27 goals. But separated out, only six goals came from combinations of five or more passes, organized from their own half. The rest came from set pieces, penalties, or individual errors by opponents. I watched the plays over and over, not to find someone to blame, but to answer the question: how does this team win? More notably, on average each match, U23 Vietnam midfielders made more than 20 long balls. That number shows that direct play still occupies too large a share compared with the standard of an organized team. I do not deny the efforts of coach Kim Sang-sik. He won the AFC Champions League with Jeonbuk Hyundai Motors, and I believe he understands the importance of structure — a word he repeats in almost every press conference. But the gap between tactical plans and what happens on the pitch remains huge. One evening in Hanoi, I opened Football Manager and let the whole world run on an old computer — a habit left over from the "virtual season" during the pandemic. I simulated U23 Vietnam against a high-pressing team like Uzbekistan. The result repeated for the third time: our midfield could not escape the press, and the score was 0-2. A video game cannot tell everything, but it exposed a structural flaw: the team has no Plan B under pressure. Let me talk about a recent group-stage match in a regional tournament, against a team playing intense pressing. U23 Vietnam deliberately gave up possession and waited for counterattacks. We led 2-0 after the first half thanks to two set pieces. The opponent pushed forward, and in the remaining 60 minutes, our team almost had no central combination strong enough to pass the second pressing line. I counted only four times our midfielders received the ball with their back to the opponent's goal and made a next pass that created a chance. Most of the time, the ball circulated harmlessly between centre-backs and full-backs, then a long ball was sent for the striker to fight. Fans look at the 2-0 scoreline and feel safe. But an analyst sees what the scoreline does not reflect: the inability to build play against an organized team. The transfer market makes the problem worse. I have heard sporting directors whisper about prices of 30 to 40 billion dong for a 20-year-old with just one V.League season. In Europe, people have bitterly watched 100-million-euro deals for players with fewer than 50 top-level matches; the risk logic in Vietnam is no different, only the scale. When money is on the table before talent is proven in a harsh environment, we create a generation of players too protected, praised too early, and rarely facing real challenges. V.League does not help much. The average playing time of U23 players was less than 15 percent of total minutes last season. Clubs prioritize immediate results, hiring foreign players in key positions such as central midfield and attacking midfield — the two positions that decide the rhythm and tactical thinking of the whole team. A young player, no matter how naturally gifted, cannot develop tactical awareness if he only gets 15 minutes at the end of a settled match. That explains why, despite having one of the most talented young generations in Southeast Asia, V.League still does not produce central midfielders capable of controlling the game. In Japan or South Korea, people are willing to pay the price of a few defeats so that an 18-year-old talent can play a full 90 minutes in his best position. In Vietnam, three consecutive defeats are enough for a coach to lose his job. Long-term development always loses to short-term victories in a football culture living on the breath of immediate results. I still remember the summer of 2026, when I was a young reporter in Busan, writing about a sleeping giant named Kim Jin-kyu in K League 2 — a player no big club bothered to watch. The article made me a laughingstock, until six months later, Jeonbuk Hyundai Motors spent 1.2 million USD to bring him in. I tell this story because it taught me a lesson: what the crowd ignores is often what shapes the future. For Vietnamese youth football, what is being ignored is not a single player, but an entire tactical foundation. Consensus is where stories die; I choose to stand where the wind blows against. While the whole country celebrates the title, I want to say something hard to hear: we won because of outstanding individuals in a region that is no longer so strong, not because of a proper training system. Look at Thailand, the team we just beat. Despite losing, they still showed a short-passing group game, organized from academy to first team. They lost one match, but they have a foundation. We won one tournament, but if tactical thinking does not change at the root, we are building a house on sand. I know these words will cause debate. Calling a hero by an unpleasant label — like when I called Harry Kane a "poacher" at the 2026 World Cup — has never been a way to make friends with the crowd. Back then, I was pelted for weeks, but I learned to stand firm when data was behind me. The storms of criticism did not kill me; they only sharpened the judgments that followed. Maybe I am wrong about Vietnamese youth football. I am ready to accept that. But I still bet on one fact: if we do not look straight at the gap between "winning" and "playing well," the price will come at the exact moment we meet truly organized teams from West Asia or East Asia. The answer lies in youth training centres, in giving more opportunities to young players in V.League, and in those who shape the national football strategy. Look at the bottom of the table before looking at the top. When we win the next youth title, I hope the numbers that tell the truth about goals coming from structure will be higher. We already have good bricks. The remaining question is who will be the builder. Because the "giant" only truly wakes up when he stops believing he wins by gods, and starts believing in his own hands.