Not just about star Quang Hai

In a move to affirm the recent rise of Vietnamese football, the Quang Hai event will certainly cause a big stir in the football world and is a new beginning that brings much hope after the previous seniors have moved away and quickly retired.

In fact, according to what can be observed in the daily movements of the football village, the star player born in 1997, who is 25 years old this year, is playing abroad for the first time, late compared to many others at home and abroad. But this is certainly a careful, calculated choice, suitable for the requirements not only of the individual but also of the football industry. That is when Quang Hai affirms his talent on the domestic field, in regional and continental tournaments, expanding, improving his vision, and finding new challenges at a higher level is normal. With that "experience", I believe that Quang Hai is capable and knows how to not be "lost" among players with superior physique and physical strength, keeping up with the speed and requirements of a match in a European tournament.

Quang Hai has left Hanoi FC to realize his ambition of playing abroad. Photo: Internet

Of course, when playing abroad, professional skills on the field go hand in hand with foreign language requirements, the ability to integrate with local culture and team culture. The press has repeatedly praised the fact that top Korean star Son Heung-min, when he went to Germany and then to England to play, "spends time on the training ground and the field, only studying foreign languages" and this star has now reached world class when he just won the Premier League's top scorer award for the 2021-2022 season with 23 goals.

And the new team ofQuang HaiIn the future, at different levels, there will also be a gathering of many players with different nationalities, cultural identities, and different levels of integration. Difficulties and hardships will happen every day, every hour for a player from the lowlands of the football world, who has only been trained and played domestically. To see, the coming time will be a huge challenge in many aspects for Quang Hai, if he really wants to "escape the tight shirt of V. League" and seek new opportunities, new challenges on the French football field, a tournament that is not as harsh as the Premier League or La Liga...

When Quang Hai decided to leave V.League to find a new destination in the… stormy sea, compared to many seniors and teammates before him, he certainly had more advantages from the experiences of those who came after him. It was also a way to choose teams of equal strength, football backgrounds that were not top-notch, but Quang Hai was someone who had been truly "tested" on the battlefield, knew clearly who he was, and how far he could go when choosing a new destination.

Photo of Vietnam Football Team.

That was when Vietnamese football had reached the third qualifying round of the World Cup and the ticket to the festival of world football was really close. It was a real test, not just a commercial contract and it was always clearly stated that "moving away is to return" at a higher level. The home team Hanoi FC, which relied on Quang Hai as the leader to rise to dominate the V.League, will now set a higher goal from Quang Hai to gradually bring the entire football industry "on par" with developed football industries, as the first brick to build a solid foundation for long-term development in the future...

Of course, as mentioned above, Quang Hai playing abroad is just one option among many other ways for Vietnamese football to progress. There have been many predecessors who brought back a “basket full” of unsuccessful experiences. There have been young players from Saigon FC who went to Japan to compete and learn in a player exchange relationship at the club level. There have been young players who went to Germany to compete and train and were chosen to stay and study further. There have been plans for special campaigns for Vietnamese football from different generations of talented and potential players...

And more importantly, many youth training centers have now updated advanced programs, producing many potential players to follow in the footsteps of their senior Quang Hai, who will go abroad sooner with full luggage for the long journey. The above synchronous work at the national level as well as the club level, in the short term as well as the long term, will certainly soon bring positive effects towards the goal of a ticket to the upcoming 2026 World Cup.

The story of Quang Hai, but not only Quang Hai, a star with genius qualities of Vietnamese football is like that. Football is a collective game, a team sport and Quang Hai's own steps are never separate from the general situation of the whole football in the strong transition forward for a long time now...