Sad picture of Vietnamese 'professional football'

(Baonghean.vn)- After 17 years of organizing V.League, almost no club can survive by doing football business and they don't know where to start.

On March 8, 2013, the Prime Minister signed Decision No. 419/QD-TTg approving the "Vietnam Football Development Strategy to 2020, with a vision to 2030".Next week, the conference to review 4 years of implementing the 'Vietnam Football Development Strategy to 2020, vision to 2030' will be held by the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism. Looking back at the 4 years of implementing the strategy, we can see that there is still much to do.

Destination

The main goals of the 2012-2020 period of Vietnam's football development strategy: The men's national team and the men's U23 team win the Southeast Asian or SEA Games championship (1-2 times); men's football ranks among the top 15 countries in Asia; women's football ranks among the top 6 countries in Asia.

Complete the national football competition system, including: National Championship (V-League), First Division, National Cup, National Super Cup, Vietnam Football Federation Cup, National Second Division, National Third Division, national youth tournaments (U21, U18, U15, U13, U11), women's football tournament, Futsal tournament and beach soccer tournament. The number of grassroots football clubs in 2020 will reach at least 7,500 clubs.

HAGL is the only club that meets professional football standards. Photo: Internet.

The number of young athletes (U11-U18) trained centrally reaches over 4,000 athletes/year. The Vietnam Football Federation has 10-15 officials participating in the executive committee and professional committees of the Southeast Asian Football Federation (AFF), the Asian Football Confederation (AFC); there are at least 10 main referees and 20 assistant referees meeting FIFA referee standards.

To achieve the above goals, the sports sector has set out 7 major tasks, including: improving the quality of the national men's and women's teams; developing professional football; improving the quality of V.League and other tournaments in the national competition system; planning the training of talented and young athletes; developing grassroots football; training and developing human resources for management, operation, and organization of football activities...

VFF has built three important projects: training and developing football human resources for 2016-2020; the goal of being in the top 10 in Asia; and developing school football. Determining that professional football is the “goose that lays the golden eggs”, VFF and professional clubs have affirmed that they will be self-sufficient in operating costs.

Vietnam football field picture

After 4 years of implementation, among the goals of the strategy set for 2020, only women's football has received the least investment, which is to achieve (ranked 6-7 in Asia), futsal has achieved international achievements. The "dream" of winning 2-3 AFF Cup and SEA Games championships, and being in the top 15 in Asia for men's football is still too far away and illusory when in the next 3 years there are only 2 AFF Cups (2018, 2020) and 1 SEA Games (2019). And based on the achievements in the 2019 Asian Cup qualifiers, the Vietnamese men's team is currently ranked only 19th, 20th in Asia and is on a downward trend.

Now, after 17 years of organizing V.League, after the relationships of football - cement, football - banking, bricks... with the bosses, only HAGL has a professional club operation model. Almost no club can survive by doing football business and they do not know where to start. As a professional club, and just won the V.League, Quang Nam is not allowed to participate in the AFC playground because... it is unprofessional, not participating in enough youth tournaments according to regulations. It has significantly reduced the reputation of Vietnamese football.

Winning V.League but Quang Nam still cannot participate in AFC Champions League. Photo: Internet

When clubs, referees and players do not live on the main source of income from television copyright, ticket sales and souvenirs, it is difficult to have “clean football”. Violent images, “strange penalties”, “ghost whistles”… have been and are losing the trust of football fans. The empty stands have discouraged sponsors, making it difficult for both VPF and clubs to find funding.

The fact that the three important projects in the Vietnam Football Development Strategy to 2020 with a vision to 2030 are: the football human resource training and development project; the Asia Top 10 target program; the school football development program, but no department is responsible for implementation, during the past time everyone has been doing their own thing so... no project has been implemented, causing everything to stagnate.

An Thanh