VFF helpless?

(Baonghean) -Last week, 'storms' arose again in the V.League arena, the sad problem still revolved around the story of the 'king of the field'.

That was the audience of the mountain town of Pleiku, the players and leaders of the HAGL team were furious with the referee's way of blowing the whistle. From leading 2-0, the 3-0 goal was recognized but in the end the referee "blows the whistle" to deny the 3rd goal, leading to HAGL losing to FLC Thanh Hoa in a humiliating way.

Not only the spectators present at the stadium, but also those who watched the match on television were very dissatisfied with the way the referees handled the match. Facing a home team HAGL playing excellently, with classy performances from Cong Phuong, Van Toan, Van Thanh... the FLC Thanh Hoa players fought back by playing dirty tricks, frustrating the opponent, but the referees still ignored these unsportsmanlike acts. To "defend themselves", the HAGL players reacted to the referees.

Refereeing is becoming increasingly controversial in V.League. Photo: Internet

However, it seems that the main referee Tran Xuan Nguyen and his assistants did not adjust their way of blowing the whistle, but instead demonstrated the authority of the “black shirt king” by “bullying” the HAGL players with many “whistle blowing” actions that were disadvantageous to the home team. This caused the HAGL players to continuously protest on the field, and the HAGL team leaders also had to rush onto the field to argue.

This is not the first time that referees have been strongly criticized by football teams. But this time, the “black shirt king” has “touched” the team of Mr. Duc – the current Vice President of the Vietnam Football Federation. Remember, right at the beginning of this season, Mr. Duc spoke up about refereeing in the V.League: “I have never seen anywhere in the world where the father (Mr. Nguyen Van Mui) is the Head of the Referee Committee, and the son (Mr. Nguyen Trong Thu) is the referee.

But doing it year after year, season after season. I think as long as Mr. Mui is still covering up and nurturing referees." At that time, Mr. Duc warned: "I've racked my brain, if we want to change Vietnamese football now, the only way left is to completely erase these overlapping interest groups, completely erase them, change the blood and start over, only then can we hope to improve."

This time, Mr. Duc’s team tasted the “bitter taste” of the “kings of the field” for them. Although the match ended, HAGL filed a petition to review the refereeing because they believed that there were at least 5 situations where the refereeing team made serious wrong decisions, affecting the match result.

However, after conducting a “tape analysis”, the Referee Board recently said that the decisions of the referee team on the field were all correct! Meanwhile, HAGL received 2 penalties: Head of the delegation Nguyen Tan Anh was suspended from duty for 3 matches, fined 7 million VND and the stadium organizer was fined 25 million VND for letting fans overreact to the referee. The Referee Board also confirmed that there was no way to erase the red card for A Hoang.

Many people think that if a “powerful” person like Mr. Duc, who has a high position in VFF, still has to say such harsh words and accept his team being “treated” by the referee like that, then it is natural for other “small” teams to be “bullied”. It seems that VFF is “powerless” before the “black-shirted kings” under its management!

Duc Dung