The Silence of V.League: When No One Tells Vietnamese Football's Stories Anymore

The Silence of V.League: When No One Tells Vietnamese Football's Stories Anymore

On an afternoon in late April, I sat in Stand B of a provincial stadium, where four thousand seats were only a third filled. The wind from the rice fields blew in through the gaps in the roof, carrying the smell of wet grass and cooking smoke from the villages behind the goal. On the pitch, a team in red shirts was practicing high balls, while the visiting team in blue quietly passed the ball back and forth in the center circle, as if both sides had silently understood that no one would remember the result of this match by next week.

I counted eleven people sitting in the VIP area. There was no television camera except a small one from the provincial radio station, mounted on a worn tripod. There was no electronic scoreboard, no big screen, no commentator reading out player names in the familiar excited style. There was only the referee's whistle and the scattered cheers of a few hundred older fans, people who had been sitting here for thirty years, regardless of where their team stood in the table.

That was the moment I realized something I had suspected for years in this profession: most of Vietnamese football does not happen in places that get recorded. It happens in half-empty stands, in early morning training sessions before the dew has lifted, on twelve-hour bus rides to play a match whose score will be forgotten before the fans get home. And most of that part has no one to write about it, no one to measure it, no one to count it.

Why does this matter right now? Because Vietnamese football is entering a period in which everything is supposed to be measured. Clubs must submit financial reports to meet the Asian Football Confederation's licensing standards. Matches must have data to support tactical analysis. Academies must prove their training efficiency with numbers. But behind that shell of data are real people, real stories, and most of them are still waiting for someone to sit down and listen.

I have followed Vietnamese football from Japan for nearly three decades. I have sat in large stadiums where the sound of tens of thousands of fans shook the stands, and I have also sat in small stadiums where the calls between two defenders rang clearer than the loudspeakers. What I learned after all those years is not how to read a league table, but how to recognize what the silence is saying.

This article does not aim to praise the past or judge the present. It aims to point out one simple thing: when we decide that only what can be measured deserves to be told, we have unwittingly left behind most of our own story. And in football, where memory is the most precious asset, leaving those stories behind is a loss that no statistical table can compensate for.

To understand why this silence exists, one must understand the structure of Vietnam's professional football league. V.League 1, the highest tier of Vietnamese men's football, operates with about fourteen clubs, playing a double round-robin format. Technically, it is a complete league, with regulations, schedules, a transfer system, and club licensing standards issued by the Vietnam Football Federation. But economically and in terms of media coverage, it is a profoundly uneven league.

Let us start with revenue. In many major leagues around the world, broadcasting rights revenue is the number one pillar for clubs. In Vietnam, that pillar barely exists. Broadcasting rights money is distributed to clubs in numbers so modest that it cannot play a key role in budgets. This means most V.League clubs live on two sources: sponsorship from their parent company, and the generosity of patrons. Whether a club survives or disappears often depends on one individual, not on a system.

This structure has a direct consequence for the story we are discussing. When a club lives on a patron, whether that club is mentioned in the media also depends on how much the patron wants it mentioned. Clubs with media-savvy owners appear in newspapers, on television, in press conferences. Clubs with no one opening doors for them in the media gradually fade into darkness, not because they are inferior, but because no one is showing others where they are.

I saw this with my own eyes. In a season a few years ago, I traveled to a central province to shoot behind-the-scenes footage for a short documentary about a mid-table club. The club's leadership welcomed me with two bottles of water and a plastic table placed in the corridor. They told me they had no press room because that room had been converted into a dressing room for substitute players. They also added that they had sent press releases regularly to journalists for years, but no one published them. I asked why. The club's media officer smiled and said: "Because we don't have any player that people want to ask about."

That answer, honest to the point of pain, is the key to understanding the problem.

In a football media system where attention is the scarcest resource, attention flows toward places that already have attention. Big clubs, famous stars, derbies in major cities will continue to attract cameras. Provincial clubs, unknown players, unremarkable matches will continue to lie outside coverage. And when the number of articles about them declines, the amount of data about them declines too. This is not a deliberate process, but an automatic one, like water flowing to the lowest ground.

How does this differ from other leagues in the Southeast Asian region? The reality is that it does not differ much. Leagues such as Thai League, Malaysia Super League, or Liga 1 Indonesia are also struggling with similar issues of revenue distribution and media coverage. But Vietnam has one peculiarity: the speed of Vietnamese football's development over the past decade has far outstripped the speed of the system that records it. We have produced more new stories than our capacity to store them. And that is the central contradiction of this era.

Look at the national team. Vietnam reached the final of the 2026 AFC U23 Championship in China, a feat that thrilled the whole country. There were thousands of articles, hundreds of hours of broadcasting, millions of shares on social media. But if I ask you the name of the third substitute of that U23 team, the one who did not play a single minute, would you remember? If I ask you about the players who trained with the team throughout the three months of preparation but were cut at the last moment, would you know who they are? Very likely not. But they, too, were part of that story. They, too, sweated, dreamed, and cried. There was simply no one to record it.

This gap is not only a problem of journalism. It is also a problem of data. In Europe, every player from the age of twelve has a data profile. Every match at youth level is recorded by camera and analyzed by software. In Vietnam, data exists mainly at the professional level, and even there, it is uneven. A V.League match may be fully recorded, but a match in the first division, or a youth match, may have no significant data at all. And when data does not exist, the players who play there also become invisible to the selection system, to the transfer system, to collective memory.

I remember a conversation with a young Japanese coach working in Vietnam. He said something to me that I still remember: "You have a lot of talent here, but you have no way of knowing how much you have." He recounted that he had once discovered an eighteen-year-old player at a district team, someone with the technique and tactical vision to play in V.League. But to bring him into the professional system, he had to spend almost a year just verifying basic information: when he was born, which teams he had played for, whether he had any history of injury. No one had a record of him.

This is precisely the point I want to emphasize. The biggest problem of Vietnamese football is not a lack of talent, but a lack of infrastructure to remember talent. We have a system that produces stories, but not a system solid enough to preserve them. And in a football culture where memory is capital, the lack of memory infrastructure is a very large deficit.

Let us consider a more concrete example of how data is created and lost. When a V.League match takes place, it is usually broadcast on a television platform or an online channel. A recording of that match will exist somewhere. But if we want to find a specific match from ten years ago, to rewatch an incident involving a retired player, the likelihood of finding it is very low. There is no centralized archive for V.League matches. There is no Vietnamese football library in the professional sense. What exists are only scattered clips on social media, often without context, often shared without origin.

What does this mean for analytical work? It means an analyst who wants to study the playing style of a Vietnamese team in the past faces an almost complete void. They may have the league table, they may have the squad list, they may have a few articles. But they do not have detailed data on how that team played, how they defended, how they transitioned from attack to defense. And when there is no data, analysis becomes speculation, and speculation becomes prejudice.

I saw the consequences of this in my documentary work. When shooting a film about a small club, I wanted to find footage of the most important match in their history, the match in which they won promotion fifteen years earlier. I contacted the provincial television station, the federation, veteran fans. In the end, I found a seven-minute video, low quality, filmed from the stands with a home camera. Seven minutes for one of the most important moments of a community. That is all that remains.

But there is a thought-provoking paradox here. When official data does not exist, personal memory becomes more important than ever. In the case of that small club, what I collected did not come from archives, but from the mouths of people who lived through the moment. A former player told me about the feeling when he scored the decisive goal, in such detail that I could imagine the smell of the grass and the shouts of his teammates. An elderly fan told me about the bus full of people who followed the team throughout that season. A drink seller at the stadium gate told me about how her revenue tripled after the promotion match. None of these numbers were recorded in any official report, but they are the true history of the club.

This leads me to another observation, about how so-called "modern data analysis" is entering Vietnamese football. In recent years, I have seen more and more clubs, more and more television programs talking about xG, about pass numbers, about distance covered, about pressing intensity. These concepts are very useful, but they are only useful when the data behind them is reliable. And in Vietnam, the data behind them is often not reliable to the degree that people assume.

Take one example. When a television program says a player has a high xG, how is that number calculated? Based on whose model? Based on data collected in what way? In major leagues, there is an entire system of cameras tracking every player, every ball, with accuracy down to fractions of a second. In Vietnam, most data is still collected by hand, by people sitting in the stands and marking events. That does not mean the data is worthless. But it means the data has a certain margin of error, and that margin is rarely mentioned when the number is presented on television.

The deeper problem is this: when we focus on what can be measured, we inadvertently reshape how we see football. A player without beautiful statistics will be considered inferior, even when the naked eye sees him play well. A team without data will be considered unworthy of analysis, even when they are playing beautiful football. Gradually, the standard of attention becomes the standard of measurability, not the standard of real value.

I have seen this in how clubs select players. One coach told me that he received a list of young players from a data analytics company, with technical, physical, and psychological indicators. He said the list was very useful, but there was one problem: it only included players who had played in leagues where data was tracked. Players playing in leagues that were not tracked, no matter how talented, did not appear on the list. And in Vietnam, most leagues are not tracked for data.

This is a form of what I call the "data blind spot." When we build a system of observation, we simultaneously build a system of omission. What lies outside the field of observation will not be recorded, and what is not recorded will not exist in decisions. For Vietnamese football, the data blind spot is precisely the rural areas, the youth leagues, the small clubs, and the players with no one to represent them.

I want to tell a specific story about this blind spot. A few years ago, I had the chance to visit a youth football academy in a northern province. This academy was not famous, did not have modern facilities, did not have foreign experts. But the head coach there was a man who had spent thirty years of his life traveling through districts and communes, searching for gifted children. He told me he had no computer, no software, no data. He had only his eyes and his memory. He remembered the names of hundreds of children he had watched play, remembered which positions they played, remembered their strengths. Among them, a few had made it to professional teams. But most had not, not because they were not good enough, but because there was no path for them to continue.

When I asked him whether he had thought about recording what he knew, he laughed and said: "Record it for what? Who would read it?"

That answer haunted me for months. It points to a truth that data is not a neutral concept. Data exists when someone cares about it, when someone is willing to pay to collect it, when someone is willing to spend time reading it. When no one cares, data does not exist, even though the knowledge remains in the head of an old man in a provincial town.

And this is precisely where our story connects to a larger issue: the relationship between football and community. In Vietnam, football is not just a sport. It is part of social life, part of local identity, part of collective memory. When a provincial team plays, an entire community follows. When a young player succeeds, an entire district is proud. When a team is relegated, an entire region feels a sense of loss. These emotions cannot be measured by indicators, but they are the foundation of Vietnamese football.

I remember an evening in a small café near the stadium of a provincial team. The match had ended, the home team had lost. I sat listening to middle-aged men talking to each other about the match, about every incident, about every decision of the coach. They talked passionately, in detail, as if they were rewriting the match with their memory. None of them took notes. But if you asked them about that match a year later, they would still remember. They are the living archive of local football, an archive not marked on any map.

I wonder: what will happen to that archive when this generation passes? When those men no longer sit in the café, who will tell the story of that match? Who will remember the name of the player who scored? Who will remember the feeling of the stands in that moment? If no one records it, the memory will dissolve, and part of the history of Vietnamese football will disappear with it.

This is why I believe that recording is an ethical act, not merely a technical one. When we record a story, we are telling the people in that story: you matter, you deserve to be remembered, you are part of history. And in a football culture where most stories are not recorded, recording even a small story is a meaningful act.

Now I want to turn to a different, more counterintuitive angle. Many people believe the problem of Vietnamese football is a lack of data, a lack of analysis, a lack of professionalization. I believe that is partly true, but it is not the whole story. The deeper problem is that Vietnamese football is importing a measurement system from elsewhere, imposing it on a reality that does not fit, and then blaming itself for not meeting that standard.

Think about this. Indicators such as xG were developed in the context of European football, with a rhythm, space, and playing style very different from ours. When we apply them to V.League without adjustment, we are measuring one thing with the ruler of another. For example, a V.League team may play with a deeper defensive line, with fewer chances, with chances of different quality. Their xG may be low, but that does not mean their attack is weak. It means they are playing a different kind of football, in a different context, with different objectives.

Similarly, applying European financial standards to V.League clubs may produce unintended consequences. When a club is judged as "not professional enough" for failing to meet a certain standard, the question that needs to be asked is: is that standard appropriate to their context? And if not, does imposing it actually help, or does it only create an unnecessary sense of inferiority?

I am not saying we should abandon measurement. Measurement is necessary. But I am saying we need to develop our own ways of measuring, suited to our own reality. Instead of importing indicators, we can develop new indicators based on what matters in Vietnam. For example, instead of only measuring goals scored, we could measure a player's influence on his community. Instead of only measuring revenue, we could measure the degree of fan engagement with the club. These indicators are harder to measure, but they reflect more accurately the real value of Vietnamese football.

This is the counterintuitive point: the greatest challenge of Vietnamese football is not to become more like Europe, but to become more accurate to itself. Copying the model of others may produce beautiful numbers, but it does not produce lasting value. Lasting value comes only from building a system suited to our own people and culture.

I recall a conversation with a Japanese football expert who had worked in Vietnam for many years. He told me that what he admired most about Vietnamese football was its community connection. He said that in Japan, everything is organized perfectly, but sometimes he feels a lack of warmth. In Vietnam, things may be more chaotic, but there is a connection between players and fans that he rarely sees elsewhere. He said: "You have something we have lost. Do not rush to lose it in order to be like us."

That remark, I think, is an important reminder. In the process of professionalization, there is a risk that we will lose what makes Vietnamese football special. We may have more data, more analysis, more standards, but if we lose community connection, we have lost the most precious thing.

So how do we balance modernization and the preservation of identity? I do not have a complete answer, but I have a few thoughts.

First, we need to invest in recording stories, not just numbers. This means building archives, museums, projects that document the history of local football. It also means encouraging journalists, filmmakers, and researchers to spend time understanding stories that have not been told. A good archive does not just preserve data; it preserves memory.

Second, we need to develop indicators suited to the Vietnamese context. This requires cooperation between analysts, coaches, and social researchers. We do not need to reinvent the wheel, but we need to adjust it to suit our own road.

Third, we need to protect community connection during development. This means ensuring that fans still have a voice, that clubs maintain their connection to their locality, that football remains part of social life and not just an industry.

I want to end this article with a personal story. In 2026, when the pandemic shut down every pitch, I fell into a creative crisis. I deleted nine film drafts about football because I felt they were meaningless in a world without matches. But one night in April, I reopened my sound archive and heard a recording from years earlier: the sound of a ball bouncing on an empty stadium. In the echo of the ball, I heard everything I love about football. And I realized that absence also has its own melody, a melody that needs to be listened to.

That is the biggest lesson I have learned in my career. Silence is not emptiness. It is a space full of untold stories, unnamed emotions, unseen people. Our job is not to fill the silence with numbers, but to learn to listen to it.

Vietnamese football is at a crossroads. On one hand, it has the opportunity to grow more powerfully than ever, with more resources, more attention, more potential. On the other hand, it risks losing what makes it special if it focuses too much on being like others and forgets to be itself.

I believe the road ahead is not choosing between modernization and preserving identity. It is finding a way for both to coexist. We can have both data and memory. We can have both analysis and emotion. We can have both system and community. What matters is that we remember the ultimate goal of football is not numbers, but people.

When I left Stand B of that provincial stadium on that April afternoon, I walked past a group of older fans waiting at the gate to greet the players. One of them, an old man of about seventy, held out a small piece of paper and asked a young player for an autograph. That young player was perhaps not the star of the team, perhaps would never play for the national team, perhaps would never be written about in the newspapers. But in the eyes of that old man, he was part of something greater than himself.

I stood there for a while, watching that scene. And I thought about all the similar stories happening across Vietnam, in small stadiums, in early morning training sessions, on long bus rides. These stories will never appear in statistical tables. But they are the backbone of Vietnamese football. They are why this sport matters so much.

Empty stands, but memory queues long in the terraces. I wrote that line in a notebook years ago, and it still holds true today. Vietnamese football is built not only from goals and titles, but also from small moments that no one records. If we want to truly understand Vietnamese football, we must learn to see those moments.

People do not remember the score; they remember how a pair of boots left a print on the grass. That is a truth I learned after nearly three decades in this profession. And it is also why I believe the future of Vietnamese football lies not only in becoming more professional, but also in becoming more honest with its own stories.

We need journalists willing to go where no one goes, filmmakers willing to spend three months on a story no one cares about, researchers willing to collect data from sources that are not readily available. We need a larger, more sustainable, and more inclusive ecosystem of memory.

And above all, we need to remember that every forgotten story is a loss. Not a loss of revenue or reputation, but a loss of meaning. Football is part of life, and life includes not only what is measured. It includes what is felt, remembered, passed from one generation to the next.

Rostov whispers, and I hear a whole World Cup in it. When I sat in Rostov in 2026, watching Japan lose to Belgium in a dramatic match, I learned that the silence after a defeat can say more than any goal. I remember the image of Japanese players bowing their heads to pick up candy wrappers, wiping washbasins, leaving small notes written with the word "Spasibo." The contrast between the anguish on the pitch and the dignity backstage taught me that football does not end when the whistle blows.

I believe Vietnamese football also has such moments, moments that if recorded, would become part of the national heritage. But to record them, we need a change in how we view value. We need to ask: what do we want to remember about Vietnamese football? What do we want to pass on to the next generation?

If the answer is "only titles and stars," then we will lose most of our story. But if the answer is "everything that makes Vietnamese football," then we need to start recording now, before it is too late.

Because one day, those men sitting in the café will no longer be here. Those old men asking for autographs at the stadium gate will no longer be here. Those coaches searching for talent in faraway districts will no longer be here. And if we do not record what they know, part of the history of Vietnamese football will disappear with them.

One meter fifty-eight cannot touch the crossbar, but it is enough to touch the heart of a whole city. I wrote that about a young striker in Kanazawa, who taught me that physical limits do not determine a person's value. I believe Vietnamese football has thousands of such stories, stories about people overcoming limits, people not defined by measurements, people whose value cannot be measured by any indicator.

Our job is to find them, listen to them, and record them.

That is not an easy task. It demands time, resources, and patience. It demands that we go to places without light, sit in half-empty stands, listen to stories no one wants to hear. But it is precisely in those moments that Vietnamese football reveals its true nature.

In an arena of a thousand people gone hoarse, I hear the typing of keys clearly, like a heartbeat. That is my feeling as I sit writing in Tokyo, following Vietnamese matches on screen, trying to record what I see. I know I am only a distant observer, that I cannot fully understand what is happening back home. But I believe that recording, even from a distance, still has value. Because every story recorded is a fragment of memory preserved.

The future of Vietnamese football will be shaped not only by what happens on the pitch, but also by what we choose to remember. If we choose to remember only what is easy to measure, we will have an impoverished memory. But if we choose to remember everything that makes Vietnamese football, we will have a rich heritage, a heritage that can be passed on to many generations.

That choice is in our hands. And it begins with listening to the silences.

Because in those silences, there is a whole football culture waiting to be told.