Coach Kim Sang-sik and Vietnam's football's thirst for a number 9.
In the last 5 V.League seasons, the top scorer has always been a foreign player; in the 2025/26 season, only Nguyen Hoang Duc was in the top 10. Coach Kim Sang-sik is changing tactics, waiting for Vi Hao and Xuan Son.
The thirst for a "number 9" is shaping how coach Kim Sang-sik is building the Vietnamese national team: a team with speed and pressing skills, but lacking a center forward who can consistently score goals. In the last five V.League seasons, the top scorer title has consistently gone to foreign players; and in the 2025/26 season, according to Fstats, only Nguyen Hoang Duc – originally a midfielder – will be among the top 10 strikers. This picture explains why Tien Linh remains the number one choice for the domestic center forward position.
The thirst for the number 9: from V.League to the Vietnamese national team.
The trend of relying on foreign players for goalscoring has led to a scarcity of domestic center forwards. Young players with decent physiques like Bui Van Binh (Ho Chi Minh City Police, born in 2003, 1.78m tall) or Nguyen Minh Tam (HAGL, born in 2005, 1.81m tall) are still only at the potential stage, mainly coming on as substitutes, thus lacking the high-intensity environment to hone their finishing skills and control of space in the penalty area.
Since the era of Cong Vinh, Anh Duc, and more recently Tien Linh, Vietnamese football has not produced another reliable center forward. The 2018 AFF Cup is proof of this: Coach Park Hang-seo had to recall veteran Anh Duc, and it was he who scored the decisive goal in the final against Malaysia. Seven years have passed, and that void remains.
Why was Coach Kim forced to change his tactics?
Stemming from a philosophy that emphasizes physicality and tactical discipline, coach Kim Sang-sik needed a true "number 9" to stabilize the attacking structure. But without a classic center forward at his disposal, he had to adjust the system to be more flexible.
Since taking over, he has gradually shifted to a style of play based on speed and versatility. Players who excel at playing on the wings or moving wide, such as Nguyen Quoc Viet, Nguyen Dinh Bac, Nguyen Thanh Nhan, Nguyen Ngoc My, and Vo Van Thuan, are rotated to play as the furthest forward. While not as a central striker, they help the team increase pressing energy and open up more attacking options through bursts of speed and positional changes.
Bui Vi Hao: Efforts to recreate a leading domestic talent
Coach Kim has high expectations for Bui Vi Hao – who was once the main goalscorer for the An Giang youth team. Vi Hao possesses speed, technique, good finishing ability, and can play both as a center forward and on the wing. However, injuries and a period of playing on the wing mean he needs more time to regain his best form, especially his spatial awareness within the 16.5-meter box.
Tien Linh, Xuan Son, and the fragile attacking system.
In the national team, Tien Linh remains the number one option thanks to his experience at the highest level and his finishing instincts. However, to diversify the goal-scoring output, Coach Kim is still waiting for Xuan Son – the highly anticipated naturalized player – to fully recover. He is the only name who can directly replace Tien Linh's role in the short term. But when everything depends on one individual, the attacking system always faces a fragile risk.
At the U22 level, the problem of finding a suitable domestic striker continues to be a major concern. With a limited supply of "number 9" players, shifting tactics to optimize the group of players with speed and pressing skills becomes the most viable option for coach Kim.
Tactical perspective: Utilize speed to compensate for the lack of a "number 9" (striker).
The current context makes the value of off-ball movement, high-pressure pressing, and attacking the space behind the opponent's defense crucial. Without a fixed target in the penalty area, attacks need to be designed to stretch the opponent's structure, creating space for players to surge forward and shoot from the second line – something the young players can provide thanks to their speed.
However, to solve the long-term problem, the V.League needs to give more playing time to young strikers like Bui Van Binh or Nguyen Minh Tam. Only with sufficient experience at a high intensity will they accumulate the skills to choose their position, sniff out opportunities, and convert them into effective goalscoring – the decisive qualities of a "number 9".
Until a domestic center forward with the same level of skill as the generations of Cong Vinh and Anh Duc once had, coach Kim Sang-sik will have to live with the "number 9 drought" – and continue to adapt to convert youth, speed, and pressing into goals.
