What is the regime for young athletes?
In the current sports sector, the whole country has 34 provinces and cities and 2 sectors: the Army and People's Police are participating in professional work in many sports. In which, each sports team of the province, city and sector is always built with 2 specific lines of forces for young people, including training talented athletes and training young athletes.
Each unit has regulations on salary (salary) and specific nutrition for young and talented athletes. Above all, the standards are based on the levels issued in Decree 152/2018/ND-CP of the Government issued on November 7, 2018, which stipulates a number of regimes for coaches and athletes during training and competition and Circular 86/2020/TT-BTC issued by the Ministry of Finance on October 26, 2020, detailing specific nutrition regimes for high-achieving sports coaches and high-achieving sports athletes.
At the grassroots level, when training, each young athlete is entitled to nutrition (food allowance) of 200,000 VND/day, and when preparing for the tournament, the nutritional level can be increased to 240,000 VND/person/day. The salary regime for young athletes is 180,000 VND/person/day. If athletes of youth teams, talented teams of industries, provinces, and centrally-run cities do not receive salaries from the State budget, the salary per day is 75,000 VND/person (young athlete) and 55,000 VND/day (talented athlete).
According to regulations on finance, nutrition and wages for young athletes, it is required to ensure the correct regime. However, if young athletes receive wages of 180,000 VND/person/day, then in one month, according to the internship day (26 days/month), the salary is less than 5 million VND. This income is still lower than the current general level.
How to keep young people?
Three young faces who created outstanding competition results in 2025 have attracted the attention of experts and fans, including Nguyen Thanh Duy (weightlifting, Gold Medal of the 2025 Asian Youth Games), Bui Tuan Tu (athletics, Silver Medal of the 2025 Asian Youth Games), Nguyen Thuy Hien (swimming, Bronze Medal of SEA Games 33).
Thanh Duy was selected and trained in talent in Khanh Hoa locality while Tuan Tu was discovered to have expertise from Lai Chau sports. Thuy Hien grew up in the Army sports environment.
Coach Nguyen Tien Tung of Lai Chau athletics has repeatedly worried that: "Our sports invest in young people, but when the resources are moderate, talented athletes and young people are not selected much, so each face found is very valuable. Lai Chau Sports strives to ensure the best regime to help young athletes and their families feel secure to follow sports.
The guaranteed regime from nutrition to wages and salaries is still considered a factor strong enough to retain young athletes. Every year, localities always carry out the work of recruiting talented athletes to nurture future forces.
Few families want their children to pursue a career as professional athletes, but only practice healthy movements and then develop into other occupations. That is the obstacle facing the selection of talented athletes. It is necessary to improve the regime so that many parents believe that sports is also a job that ensures income so that they can find more athletes to pursue this career" - a representative of the Hanoi Center for Training and Competition of Physical Education and Sports once shared.
In fact, in many cases, young athletes follow sports but give up halfway when facing the decision to develop their lives in which direction is enough to help them ensure their future.
In 2025, the Vietnam Department of Sports and Physical Training concentrated 886 athletes in the national youth sports teams. Currently, the sports sector has its own youth training center, the National Youth Athlete Training Center (Da Nang). However, national youth sports teams wanting to have a strong force base still have to wait for basic training selection from localities.
