The Difficult Situation of Hai Phong Football Team
As reported by the Vietnam Football Federation (VFF) two months ago, six teams are not allowed to participate in Asian-level tournaments (organized by the Asian Football Confederation) for the 2024-2025 season. These teams include The Cong Viettel, Hoang Anh Gia Lai, Hai Phong, TPHCM, Binh Dinh, and Khanh Hoa.
A month later, at a meeting to consider licensing clubs for the next V.League season, two of the aforementioned teams, Hai Phong and Binh Dinh, continued to be conditionally licensed with penalties. These two clubs must promptly submit documents proving they meet the financial criteria (F.04).
According to the VFF's announcement at that time, if by the deadline of July 15, which was more than half a month ago, any club that did not complete their documentation would have their license reviewed and possibly revoked by the Licensing Committee.
As of now, the VFF has not provided any further updates on whether Hai Phong and Binh Dinh have completed their procedures. However, the issue of requesting exceptional licenses or additional time to complete procedures is not unique to this season.
The recurring theme of "requesting at the last minute" has actually been happening from season to season. Among them, Hai Phong is a club that frequently requests exceptional licenses to participate in the V.League.
Looking back before V.League 2023, Hai Phong was singled out. The port city team was among the four clubs that did not meet the criteria to participate in the national championship at that time (along with Hoang Anh Gia Lai, Thanh Hoa, and The Cong Viettel).
At that time, Hai Phong had to commit to a roadmap to complete the mandatory licensing criteria (youth training criteria). However, moving into the next season, the Lach Tray Stadium team still could not fully meet the requirements.
What is the point of endless promises?
In reality, Hai Phong's request for exceptional licenses is not a new story. Besides the 2023 and 2023-2024 seasons, the port city team has made many promises but failed to deliver in previous years.
Over the past three years, the construction of youth teams for Hai Phong Football Club has not been completed. It should be noted that with a primary budget of about 50 billion VND from the city budget for all team operations in one season, Hai Phong could not recruit top players.
With limited internal resources and not abundant finances, the Lach Tray Stadium team always finds itself in a difficult personnel situation from season to season.
Speaking of personnel issues, in reality, before the start of V.League 2022, Hai Phong had to "rush" to complete the online licensing documents on time.
They promptly submitted the compensation agreement with Mpande to the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) and proved the feasibility of settling a 17.7 billion VND debt with the Hai Phong City Tax Department. Thanks to that, the team managed to complete the licensing criteria and qualified to participate in V.League 2022.
It should be added that Hai Phong is not the only club that has continuously requested exceptional licenses in recent times.
Binh Dinh Football Club has also had to request twice in the last three seasons. Before V.League 2022, Song Lam Nghe An and Binh Dinh were reprimanded and only granted exceptional licenses with penalties.
Both also did not meet the criteria to be licensed to participate in AFC-level tournaments in 2022. Before this season, Binh Dinh once again fell into the group of teams that did not meet professional football criteria.
In the context of the AFC increasingly tightening the operation of professional clubs, the VFF Licensing Committee itself cannot continue to use exceptional measures for teams wanting to participate in the V.League or higher AFC tournaments.
If this situation continues in the next season, it is uncertain whether Hai Phong, Binh Dinh, or a few other Vietnamese teams will be able to appear in the V.League.
