V-League and the story of referees...borrowing

The V-League is getting hotter towards the end of the year with the issue of... referees! In fact, a strong tournament with one of the best quality in the region, the most exciting focus should be the championship race or the relegation race. However, as usual, the issue of referees is still hot in the V.League.

SLNA players surrounded and reacted decisively to the referees' decisions in the match against Quang Nam in V-League 2020. Photo: vnexpress.net

That was 2 times, not 1, the referee "laughed" at the home team's penalty, which the away team's coach insisted was intentional, too heavy-handed, so he reacted strongly, knowing he would be disciplined but could not stop. Not only that, the away team's players also reacted simultaneously, and then all received yellow cards, all received suspensions for the next match.

That is the ironic situation of Binh Dinh, of head coach Duc Thang, of the pillars Tan Tai, Van Thuan in the decisive match with Viettel in round 23. The story of referee Ngoc Nho mentioned above is a continuation of countless previous mistakes related to 3 FIFA-level referees such as Manh Ha, Ngoc Hai or Duy Lan. Granted, "referees are also human" meaning that mistakes are inevitable, when there is no supporting technology... but repeated mistakes or related to rich teams, big-spending bosses... how can one avoid rumors and gossip.

Of course, there is no head coach who does not defend his team's players, even though they know it is wrong. There is also no fan who defends the referee when his team's players are given a red card, even if it is justified, it is considered unfair and heavy-handed. So where is the fairness when VAR hopes to start in the 2023 season (following volleyball with Challenger technology), when even the best referees make mistakes and have to be disciplined secretly. Currently, as in the past, VPF has to consider hiring foreign referees (which costs a lot of money) to officiate important matches that decide the tournament's outcome, such as the top Binh Dinh-Viettel match or the bottom Saigon FC-Nam Dinh match.

Speaking of this, we have to mention a sad "record" of the black-shirted kings of Vietnamese football. That is, in 2022, Vietnam only had 3 referees with FIFA certificates, equal to the Philippines, Laos and Cambodia, while Thailand and Malaysia had 6, Indonesia and Singapore each had 5.

No one will talk about a strong football country where there are too few good referees. A strong football country that has to hire foreign referees, does not have enough trust in domestic referees, must first look at itself, first of all at the management team, leaders, those who are assigned the responsibility of holding the scales of justice for the tournaments. But criticizing or blaming the referees, in the end, is the majority blaming the minority, it is the story of people who do not have a firm grasp of the rules protesting against the person who applies the rules in every step, the person who has plenty of time to judge compared to the person who is running, breathing and having to make a split-second decision that should not/cannot be changed. Or like protesting against the referee is "daily bread" in any big or small tournament.

The only difference is that in places with lifelong experience, people let assistants react violently, ready to receive cards, while the head coach is calm, saying nothing, even in press conferences when there is enough time to think and consider. That is a behavior that is both experienced and beneficial in the long term, and professional, avoiding mistakes and impulsiveness that are easy for anyone to make... Nowadays, people talk about "football industry" with the implication of synchronous development, quality of the whole system from technical and technological facilities to people, from management organization to expertise, professionalism... The story of good referees, wrong referees, borrowed referees... mentioned above is only a small part of the football industry in which Vietnam is certainly still inferior to many places in the region, still sweating to catch up with the world in many stages to come.