Coach Park and the dangerous spiral of Vietnamese football

More than three years ago, right after coming to Vietnam to work, Coach Park already had a group of young players who were almost all selected from the two U19 Vietnam teams in 2014 and 2016. That team, up to now, has only added two notable faces: Phan Van Duc from the 2017 National U21 tournament and Nguyen Anh Duc - "the last Mohican" of the 2008 generation. This can be understood in two ways. Either, the V-League has hardly directly provided any players for the dynasty ofCoach Park. Factors like Que Ngoc Hai or Nguyen Trong Hoang have also been outstanding since they were U23. Or, Coach Park has not discovered any new factors in the past three years of working.

Phan Van Duc (red) dribbles the ball while surrounded by U22 Vietnam players, during a friendly match at Viet Tri Stadium (Phu Tho) on January 27. Photo: Kim Hoa.

Coach Park's claim that foreign players are taking the place of Vietnamese strikers is not necessarily a blame for the V-League. In fact, if there is no mechanism for young players to play, a national team coach like him will have no basis to discover talent. Throughout 2020, the number of matches at the club level was cut by about a third, and the number of matches in youth tournaments such as U19 and U21 was also reduced because there could be no international matches. Mr. Park, obviously, has reason to be impatient.

Of course, the fault is not his.The nature of the problem lies in the paradoxical way Vietnamese football has been operated for a long time, including the period when businesses were involved.

On December 28, the PVF Youth Football Training Center held a graduation ceremony for 20 excellent students. This group of players was transferred to two V-League clubs and three First Division teams. Although the training cost after nearly 10 years for each player like that is up to tens of billions of VND, the transfer or loan money is all transferred to the players' families. Therefore, PVF's training model is more like a social charity activity of a football-minded enterprise, rather than a talent "production" facility. However, because PVF only stops at the training stage, there is also the possibility of certain waste.

One of the most notable products of this "furnace" is Ha Duc Chinh. Although Coach Park considers him a "favorite student", at Da Nang Club, the striker born in 1997 does not have much room to perform. Among the many reasons are the fact that the team has used foreign players, and the fact that this striker himself is not suitable for Coach Le Huynh Duc's tactics. Another PVF player, striker Vo Nguyen Hoang, was loaned by Saigon FC last season, but also had few opportunities to show his ability because the Pedro - Geovane pair was too effective at that time. Vo Nguyen Hoang's ability to play next season is still a question mark, because Saigon FC has just bought a series of experienced players from the J-League.

That is a big problem of Vietnamese football, which was more evident in 2020, when the development process was too dependent on the pockets of businesses. PVF trained and then... gave it away. HAGL invested for more than ten years, the players reached the peak of their careers, did not transfer to other teams but only determined to "play for fun". Quang Ninh spent five years doing basic football, and is at risk of "erasing everything and starting over" also for reasons outside the field. Binh Dinh has just been promoted to V-League after 12 years, and the first thing to do is to find 300 billion VND in sponsorship to dream of entering the top 5 within three years, not investing in youth football. When Covid-19 happened, some teams eagerly proposed to cancel the season because they were always in a state of "the more you nurture, the more money you spend" - in contrast to professional football where people have to take risks to compete to avoid losing copyright money and revenue.

Therefore, Vietnamese football up to now, is still just a "billion-dollar game" and cannot become a business system operated according to the standard pyramid model, wide at the base, narrow at the top and with each stage methodically.

Businesses are still pouring hundreds of billions of dong into football, but the management is in a "let the chickens out to chase" situation. That is, maintaining a large number of professional clubs, each living on their own. The more teams, the more money is spent, but it does not create a domestic player supply, so money is used to buy foreign players, paying high salaries. And if you want to be "pumped with money", you have to try to achieve results, continue to spend money to buy foreign players, until one day it runs out and... disappears.