Requires starting over
A few days ago, the Vietnam Football Federation (VFF) emphasized that the main goal with youth football is to help teams regularly participate in Asian finals at all ages. With that goal, VFF has planned to prepare U16 and U20 teams for training and friendly matches abroad.
That goal is of course encouraging, as it can help young players improve their skills. But experts still understand that just a few friendly matches, some qualifying matches or even reaching the final round is not enough to be called improving the level.
Starting with the story of youth football to ask the question of Vietnamese football in general, with the combination of all the things that have been happening recently, are we ready to start over?
There used to be a view that Vietnamese football had gone off track for more than 20 years of becoming professional, so if you want to start over, you just need to "go back, find the wrong problems and fix them, still based on the foundation created." , to 'turn the steering wheel' to the right orbit." However, with a series of issues, stories, and incidents that have continuously "exploded" recently, it is necessary to boldly admit that Vietnamese football does not have a solid enough foundation.
But the platform is messy
And the sad thing is that from a shaky, chaotic, oriented foundation but acting in a different direction, Vietnamese football is only "picking up" glory at a certain stage, in the context of its opponents. strongest in areas of decline or crisis. No football platform does not have to go through difficult times, but because they have created a good foundation, they come back quickly enough to assert their position. In Vietnamese football, until now, there are still many teams that owe salaries and bonuses, running around before each season to find sponsors, coming up with all kinds of plans and strategies to find ways to attract people. fans, ticket sales, competition uniforms and souvenir products... There are still stories of clubs failing in lawsuits (meaning the issue of knowing the rules of the game is still vague), there is still Many teams have not met the criteria to play in the V.League or continental cups.
And yet, it is an "irreversible" story about the transfer market, about the unreasonable attachment of clubs to trained players. And, this summer, what was shocking - or perhaps the consequence of a flawed system - was that some of the top stars in domestic football agreed to play in the First Division in return for a contract. There is a bribe clause of several tens of billions of dong.
When the professional element of the V.League is no longer considered important, what can we expect from further things? After the success of the national team and the U23 team under coach Park Hang-seo, setting a World Cup goal in more or less than 10 years is hasty.
It's not until we find ourselves in the current situation that we can confirm that it was a mistake. Many warnings were given at that time, but we just did not have a frank, direct acknowledgment. In other words, Vietnamese football has fantasized about its strength.
V.League 2024-2025 is about to start, the national team is also preparing for the next gathering under coach Kim Sang-sik and there is a view that the national team should start from the beginning. But how does the team start when "under the foundation" is still such a mess?
