detection, selection, testing
The 3 Vietnamese teams training at the Vietnam Youth Football Training Center all have overseas Vietnamese players.
For the national team, coach Kim Sang-sik called up Nguyen Filip and Cao Pendant Quang Vinh. At U22 Vietnam, Viktor Le and Alex Bui (playing in the Czech Republic) are practicing under the guidance of head coach Dinh Hong Vinh.
Meanwhile, in the Vietnam women's team, for the first time in history, a overseas Vietnamese player is Nguyen Hoang Nam Mi (playing in Canada).
It can be seen that there are two directions for selecting overseas Vietnamese resources in the past year. In addition to the names that have returned to V.League, have citizenship and played outstandingly, the coaches also paved the way for overseas Vietnamese players playing abroad to return to show themselves.
At U22 Vietnam, before Alex Bui, player Andrej An Khanh also regularly traveled from the Czech Republic to join the team in 2024 and 2025. In the U16 Vietnam team, Maxwell Peeraboom (central defender from Australia) and Thomas Mai Veeren ( Striker from the Netherlands) were also tested by coach Cristiano Roland.
Basically, the effectiveness is still directed towards overseas Vietnamese players playing in Vietnam, because they are familiar with football culture and understand more about domestic players. The cases of Nguyen Filip, Viktor Le or more distantly Dang Van Lam, Mac Hong Quan are typical examples.
However, it is undeniable that finding overseas Vietnamese players (with Vietnamese nationality) playing abroad is a suitable direction for the future.
It must be admitted that the level of V.League is still only limited to the framework of Southeast Asia. The country's football needs to find overseas Vietnamese who are capable of competing in major tournaments in Europe and America... Thanks to that, Vietnam's internal strength will truly elevate the level.
The problem of attraction
The two ways to build a system of overseas Vietnamese players have been and are being implemented appropriately by the Vietnam Football Federation. The main goal is the key to whether the Vietnamese team will recruit "talents" of Vietnamese origin in the near future or not.
Currently, Vietnam has just stopped in the top 100 in the world and the best achievement is to enter the final qualifying round of the World Cup. Meanwhile, in the Asian Cup arena, "Golden Star Warriors" only reached the top 8 strongest teams in 2/3 of the attendance.
This achievement has not really attracted talented players. Lee Nguyen, Yohan Cabaye, formerly or presently Ibrahim Maza, Phong Gia Huy, Chung Nguyen Do are typical examples of that.
If they want to recruit highly qualified overseas Vietnamese players, the Vietnamese team also needs to improve their ranking and achievements in the international arena, in parallel with the search, persuasion and additional mechanism policy. The way the archipelago recruits players of Indonesian origin is an example for Vietnamese football to learn and absorb.
In addition, overseas Vietnamese players playing in the V.League need to have more ambitions to play football abroad. The story of Dang Van Lam leaving Hai Phong to Muangthong United (Thailand) and Cerezo Osaka (Japan) is a welcome thing. At that time, the ability of overseas Vietnamese players will go beyond the V.League's borders, thereby contributing to the development of the national team.
It is known that Nguyen Filip also plans to try his hand in Thailand or Japan, if he leaves the Hanoi Police club. He is one of the rare high-class overseas Vietnamese that Vietnam currently possesses. Hopefully, in the near future, the Vietnam team will have more Nguyen Filip or Cao Pendant Quang Vinh, from the V.League to abroad.
