Behind the Lights: The V.League and the Sustainability Question of Vietnamese Football

At a V.League stadium on a March evening, I sat next to a man who had followed Vietnamese football for more than thirty years. He pointed at the empty rows behind the goal and said something I wrote down at once: "The national team draws a crowd, but the domestic league is as empty as a pagoda." I did not rush to believe him. I needed to stand still and see — to see that between the bright lights of the national team and the quiet afternoons of the V.League, there is a gap that no goal tally can measure. Vietnamese football is living a familiar paradox. The national team under coach Kim Sang-sik reached the third round of Asian qualifying for the 2026 World Cup, and every national team match turns My Dinh Stadium into a sea of red. But when the lights go out and the fans roll up their flags and go home, V.League 1 — the highest tier of Vietnamese football — is still wrestling with problems that have never been fully resolved. This story repeats across many seasons. Over more than a decade, the V.League has seen more than a few clubs dissolve, change owners, or survive on the money of a few patrons who love football more than they love a sustainable business model. Based on my experience tracking matches, I have found that dependence on individuals is always the sign of a system that is not yet complete. Looking at the financial structure of most V.League clubs, revenue from broadcasting rights, commercial deals and ticket sales all sit low against operating costs. Most of the budget comes from owner sponsorship — a form of cash injection that cannot last forever. When a patron loses interest or runs into business trouble, the club falls into crisis at once. This is a systemic weakness, and it makes every long-term plan fragile. Tactically, the V.League is still a competition where physicality and speed outweigh ball control. Teams tend to choose a direct style and pay little attention to building from the back. This reflects a reality: when pitch quality, player fitness and preparation time are all limited, deploying a possession game becomes a gamble. Teams with a good technical base such as Hanoi FC or Thep Xanh Nam Dinh can still play short passes, but they are the exception rather than the rule of the league. The youth development problem shows the gap even more clearly. A few academies such as HAGL, PVF and Viettel have produced players good enough for the national team. But most other clubs have no academy of real scale, and they must buy players from elsewhere or rely on cheap foreign imports. The result is a wide gap in squad quality between teams, which leaves the league short of even competition. Each season is a cycle of rhythm, and I have learned to count every silent note — here, those silent notes are the years in which the academies were not invested in properly. At the management level, one big question still has no satisfactory answer: who is responsible for the sustainable development of the league? The Vietnam Football Federation plays the organising and governing role, but real power often rests with the clubs and their sponsors. When interests among the parties do not align, necessary reforms such as budget caps, financial controls or better playing conditions are usually delayed. That delay does not come from malice, but from the fact that no one wants to be the first to lose out. In the dressing room, the pressure takes a different shape. A domestic coach often has to work with a squad he did not choose himself, and must balance professional demands against calculations off the pitch. Talented young players are sometimes pushed into the first team too early, then abandoned when their form dips. I once saw a nineteen-year-old midfielder sit still on the bench for ninety minutes, and no one explained to him why. In the press, the story of the V.League usually appears only when there is a scandal: players fighting, referees making mistakes, clubs owing wages. Positive stories — a new academy, a young player improving — are rarely told long enough to shape opinion. The media reflects exactly what the public cares about, but it also shapes what the public cares about. People often blame Vietnamese fans: that they love only the national team and turn their backs on the domestic league. That framing runs against what I have observed. Fans do not turn away from the V.League out of indifference; they turn away because the product they receive does not deserve the money and time they spend. A match on a poor pitch, with a low standard of play, cannot compete with a national team game that is well organised, well publicised and meaningful. The second blind spot lies in the belief that national team success will automatically lift the domestic league. Reality shows the opposite is sometimes true: when the national team succeeds, people care even less about the V.League, because all the attention has gone to the national team. National team success cannot fill the structural gap in the league — it only hides that gap for a few months. Seen broadly, Vietnamese football operates as a chain whose weakest link is in the middle. Upstream are the youth academies, which produce talent but lack a stable outlet. Downstream is the media and commercial market, where potential remains untapped. In the middle are the clubs — which should connect the two ends, but are instead struggling to survive season by season. When the middle link is weak, the whole chain cannot run smoothly, however much potential the two ends may hold. In Moscow I learned that a match can end, but its echo does not. This is true of Vietnamese football in a different way. The echo of national team victories will live on in the memory of fans, but if the V.League does not build a foundation of its own, then every time the national team fails, the whole of football will shake because it has no other point of support. Every team has someone singing, but only a few teams have someone listening. Vietnamese football has a very fine singer on the stage of the national team. What this football needs in the years ahead is a V.League with listeners — a loyal audience, a sustainable stream of money, and a youth system strong enough to feed itself. Only then will the gap between the lights and the darkness truly be filled.