Vietnamese youth football occasionally brings a few faces that people expect. Regional or continental U-level tournaments always have explosive moments, beautiful goals, and confident handling of players who are only eighteen or twenty years old. At that time, the general feeling is usually "they will go further in the future".
But behind the lights of youth tournaments, the road ahead is not always clear. Dinh Bac's case can be taken as an example. Shining in Southeast Asian and Asian youth tournaments, he is considered one of the notable attacking players of the new generation. But when returning to V.League 1, in Dinh Bac there is silence, with no goals, no assists even though he played for more than 1,000 minutes.
Is it because of the quality of the 21-year-old player? Not really, but because of the feeling that Vietnamese football is a "runway" not good enough to take off. The "runway" is sometimes more important than the quality of the plane.
Does everyone remember Abdukodir Khusanov of Uzbekistan? The 24-year-old player made a strong impression at the 2024 AFC U23 Championship (at that time only 20 years old), and now, after 2 years, is an important member of the national team as well as Man City club.
Khusanov is just one example to say that in many developed football backgrounds, young players after asserting themselves at the U level often have a very clear roadmap, being cared for and closely watched. Each step is like an extended runway, helping the career plane gain enough momentum to fly high. Of course, they themselves are also very focused on personal development.
With Vietnamese football, young players return to the V.League with a feeling of being soaring but lacking the necessary support. It's not just about playing football with the same age group differently from when playing with experienced seniors and quality foreign players, the guidance for them, from advice to action, more importantly, just "throwing" them onto the field.
Appreciating highly but lacking direction, young players may fall into a state of not necessarily retreating but also not really advancing. And when remembering the advice of an artist for Dinh Bac in particular, and young players in general, clearly, an airplane cannot take off without enough necessary elements from the "runway".
