Looking from Busan at the V.League: How Vietnamese Football Is Learning to Keep Its Own Rhythm After the Park Hang-seo Era

The Silence in the Seventieth Minute

I remember a winter evening in Busan, when sleet fell on the face of the bay outside my window while, inside my room, my laptop replay replayed an old V.League match. In the seventieth minute, a team leading by two goals began to pass sideways. The stands had emptied by half, and the chanting, while still there, had thinned. What I remember is not the goals, but the silence between two passes. The rhythm of a match is not in the ball, but in the gap between two passes.

At sixty-five, I have sat in too many stands to believe a match is decided by its loudest moments. Sometimes it is decided by what people cannot see: an extra step, a glance toward the bench, a captain's clap for a teammate who just lost the ball. I am writing this from Busan, several thousand kilometres from Hanoi, yet I still hear the pulse of a football culture I belonged to long before I belonged to the place where I now stand. Ninety-two days of a diary away from the pitch, just to learn that I belong where I stand.

What made me sit down and write at length this time did not come from a transfer headline. It came from a question I have heard often in recent years, from friends in Korea as well as colleagues in Vietnam: when the era of a Korean coach ends, what is left of Vietnamese football? The answer I want to give does not lie in the record books, but in the structure. And structure is never fully told by the scoreboard.

Context: What a Coach Leaves Behind Is Not Only Trophies

When Park Hang-seo arrived in Vietnam at the end of 2026, the country's football stood at a familiar crossroads for many Southeast Asian nations. There was talent, there was passion, and there was a domestic league capable of nurturing players — but there was something hard to quantify: a system of belief. Fans believed in individuals and in moments, but not yet that the national team could stand firm across a long tournament.

Then came 2026. Vietnam's U-23 side reached the final of the AFC U-23 Championship and lost only in extra time to Uzbekistan under the snow of Changzhou. That winter, all of Vietnam took to the streets, and I sat in Busan watching the replay a fourth time — not for the goal conceded, but for how the young players stood up after the final whistle. In the same year, the senior team won the AFF Suzuki Cup, and in early 2026, for the first time in decades, Vietnam reached the quarter-finals of the Asian Cup.

Those achievements have been retold many times. What has been retold less is what they were built upon. This is where I want to pause, because after the Korean coach left his post, people easily confuse an individual's mark with a systemic foundation. A person can pass on a flame, but a flame only burns long if there is wood. The real question is not what Park Hang-seo achieved, but how much wood Vietnamese football had prepared before he arrived, and how much it kept after he left.

As a feature sports reporter, I always start from a different question: what is the fan community feeling? Because if that question is ignored, any tactical analysis, however correct, becomes a paper exercise. Some lessons come not from victory, but from the jeers in the stands. And in Vietnam, the stands have never stayed quiet long enough for the writer to be lazy.

The Core: Three Layers of Structure the Scoreline Never Tells

The first layer: the capacity to endure pressure without the ball

What defined Vietnam's successful period was not a flamboyant style, but an organised defence without the ball. The team was willing to drop deep, keep distances between lines, and counter with accurate long passes. This is a brand of football many call pragmatic, yet in truth it demands more tactical discipline than holding the ball and passing it around.

I have watched many Vietnamese teams on screen over the years, and what I noticed is this: when they have the ball, they can look confused; when they do not, they know what to do. That is a curious paradox. Many football cultures move in the opposite direction, teaching players to play well with the ball first and worrying about defending later. Vietnam at its peak moved the other way, and precisely for that reason it stood firm against stronger, more physical opponents.

Possession is the most deceptive statistic I have seen in nearly fifty years in this trade. A team can hold sixty per cent of the ball by passing sideways in midfield and defence, then concede from a single counter-attack. Another can hold forty per cent but move toward the opponent's goal with clear intent every time it has the ball. The number on the stats sheet then completely inverts the true meaning of the match. That is why I never let a single metric write for me.

What makes a team strong is not how long it holds the ball, but whether it knows what it wants in every second it does not have it. This is a lesson Vietnamese football learned very well for a period, and also a lesson it risks forgetting as it enters a new cycle.

The second layer: xG and the trap of pretty numbers

In recent years, xG has become a keyword mentioned everywhere, including in football cultures where detailed data is still sparse. I find this somewhat worrying.

xG is a tool for measuring the quality of a chance. The tool itself is not wrong. The way people use it is. xG cannot explain why a player misses from an open goal, nor why another player manages a shot while marked by two defenders. It cannot explain a referee's decision, the mental form of a team, or the feeling in the stands when the ball drifts past the post.

In football cultures with abundant data, xG still has reference value, but people have used it enough to know its limits. In cultures newly introduced to data, people are more easily dazzled by the number. A team generates high xG without winning, and immediately there is an analysis claiming bad luck. But sometimes the so-called bad luck is simply the consequence of chances falling to players not chosen to finish, or being created when the team has already run out of ideas.

I once wrote a very long piece about a K-League match in which I used xG to argue one team deserved to win. Afterwards I received hundreds of comments reminding me that I had ignored one detail: the team had lost a key defender because of sunlight on the away pitch. It sounds strange, but to fans that information mattered more than any number. Since then I set myself a rule: every judgement must begin with people, and numbers are only allowed to appear after the people have been told.

xG is a lamp, not a verdict. It lights the way, but it does not replace the writer's final judgement.

The third layer: the current from academy to national team

What I consider the true foundation of the recent rise is not an individual, but a current. In Vietnam, several youth academies patiently trained players under a long-term model, and a generation of players grew up together, playing for one another from their early teens. When they stepped up to the national team, they understood each other so well they did not need to look.

This is very hard to buy with transfer money. A club can sign a good player in three days, but to have a squad that understands one another within a tactical block takes years. So when I read transfer reports with ever-larger figures, I always ask myself: is that number buying a player, or buying a relationship built long before?

During my time in Busan, I had the chance to follow a group of young players across several seasons. What I realised is that the fastest improvers were not those with the best physical metrics, but those placed in the right environment. An environment with a coach who understands them, teammates who trust them, and a crowd patient with them. That patience, in Vietnam during its successful years, was clearly on display.

The true foundation of a football culture is not the value of its most expensive contracts, but the number of players trained properly and trusted long enough.

Transfer Context: When the Market Drowns Out the Pitch

We are in a transfer window, and in Vietnam that means the rumour market heats up again. Names linked to clubs, figures offered then denied, photos analysed like legal evidence. I read these reports with a caution that has become habit.

One reality needs to be said plainly: the price of young players in Asia is in an inflated phase. A player who has not played fifty matches at the top level can be valued at a fraction of a club's entire wage bill. Betting on a young player is normal in football, but betting with a reward-to-risk ratio that is wildly skewed is a naked gamble. And in a gamble, people tend to celebrate the winners and forget the losers.

What interests me more than a transfer fee is the structure of the contract. Is there a release clause? How long is the term? Are there performance add-ons? How are image rights shared? These questions are rarely raised in short reports, yet they decide a young player's fate more than the fee itself. The release-clause structure and the new wage bill are the real story, not the number in the headline.

I was once asked to write a profile for a young player about to move to a European club. Before writing, I called the agent and asked to meet the player. What I learned in that meeting was not about the new club, but about how he had slumped mentally under the pressure of expectation. Instead of just publishing the news, I organised an online session for fans to send messages of encouragement. At the end of the season, the player signed a long-term deal. I do not name him, because I always seek a subject's permission before publishing, but I tell the story because it gave me a principle: a transfer is not only money, it is also the spirit of a twenty-year-old being watched by an entire football culture.

A transfer is judged not by the figure in the headline, but by the fit between the player and the environment he is about to enter.

The Contrarian Angle: Three Misunderstandings About Vietnamese Football

Misunderstanding one: success came from one man's miracle

The most-told story of Vietnamese football's rise is the story of a Korean coach with a strict style and a talent for using players. This is part of the truth, but it has obscured a larger part.

A good coach can turn an average team into a decent one. But to turn a decent team into a champion, he needs the right players at the right time. The generation the Korean coach led had come of age before he arrived. They were trained in academies, tested in youth tournaments, and already had a playing identity. The coach's role was to connect them, place them correctly, and give them belief. That is an important role, but it is the role of the one who keeps the rhythm, not the one who makes the instruments.

The rhythm-keeper does not need to beat the drum loudly, only to be on time, in place, and committed enough to stand for long. This is true of a coach, and equally true of a football culture. If we remember only the rhythm-keeper, we quietly erase the credit of those who trained these players from childhood.

Misunderstanding two: counter-attacking is pragmatism and deserves criticism

A fairly common view, especially among those who watch only the big European leagues, holds that counter-attacking football is a cowardly style without identity. I disagree, and I think Southeast Asian fans have reason to disagree.

In football, no style is inherently noble. Some teams are strong enough to hold the ball and impose their game, and some are in a building phase and must choose a style suited to their resources. Counter-attacking, done properly, is an art of patience. It demands that every player hold his position for minutes without the ball, read the game, and wait for the right moment. That is not cowardice; that is discipline.

High pressing was never wrong; it was only that I once looked at it with eyes that had no stands. I once wrote a piece criticising a K-League team for ineffective pressing, and I ignored that their key player had just returned from injury. This is a mistake I mention as a warning to myself: when we look at a style without looking at the players, we quickly reach the wrong conclusion.

Misunderstanding three: a large fanbase means a healthy football culture

Vietnam has one of the most fervent football fan communities in Southeast Asia. For every big match, the whole country seems to pause. This is a precious asset, but it can also become a trap.

When passion is too great, expectation outruns reality. A team that wins three matches is hailed as a title candidate, then after one defeat is criticised without mercy. The public's psychological swings happen faster than the real development of the football culture. This is something I have observed in many countries, not only Vietnam. In Korea, where I live, fans have gone through similar cycles. Busan taught me that the fan's heart is the most honest measure, even when it hurts the writer.

A healthy football culture is not measured by the number of people in the stands, but by the number of people working behind the stands: fitness coaches, doctors, analysts, youth developers, and even reporters like me. The crowd is the fuel, but the engine must be built by hand.

Adjusting to the Current Transfer Window

In a transfer window, I always grade rumours by three tiers of credibility. The first tier is information from clubs, with documents, timestamps, and confirmation. The second is information from agents, often with a negotiating motive behind it, which must be read carefully. The third is information from social media, where a single photo can be misread in seconds.

Vietnamese fans are becoming smarter at reading these tiers. They no longer believe a catchy headline at once. That is a good signal. A fan community that asks questions generates pressure for clubs and reporters to work more seriously.

What worries me is not misinformation itself, but its effect on young players. An eighteen-year-old placed at the centre of a transfer storm can lose years of development over baseless rumours. So I spend thirty minutes a day reading fan comments before writing — not to learn what they think, but to learn what they feel. Amid the noisy stream, I want to keep for myself a slower rhythm.

Signals to Track in the New Cycle

When an era ends, the question is not who replaces the old coach, but how much of what that era built the football culture can keep. There are three specific signals I will track in the coming years.

The first is the structure of the national team. Will the key players of the previous generation be phased out gradually, or replaced abruptly? A team that transitions well brings newcomers up alongside veterans, so they learn before they carry. A team that transitions poorly replaces an entire generation in a single camp, and the result is usually a fracture.

The second is the flow of young players abroad. This is a double-edged sword. A player competing in a more developed football culture grows quickly, but if he leaves too early and does not play, he loses his most important years. I have seen many young players in both football cultures take this path, and what decides the outcome is not the destination, but whether they are trusted at that destination.

The third is the strength of the domestic league. The national team is the peak of a pyramid, and that peak is only as tall as its base. If domestic clubs stop investing in youth development, the national team will feel it a few years later. This is a rule I believe has no exception.

Some say Vietnamese football will decline after the Korean coach's departure. I think that depends on what the football culture learned during its successful years. If it learned to build systems, it will stand firm. If it only learned to rely on one man, it will wobble. And the answer will come not from one match, but from many seasons.

What I Carry From the Silence in the Seventieth Minute

As I write this in Busan, it is raining again. I think of the silence I described at the start, and I realise it resembles the current state of Vietnamese football. A silence after a chapter closes — not muteness, but a pause to hear one's own rhythm again.

Some lessons come not from victory, but from the jeers in the stands. The criticism I hear from home is not a denial of past achievements, but a demand for patience. Fans, however loud at times, are asking for something very simple: that this football culture does not stand still waiting for another miracle, but learns to keep its own rhythm.

Three times mispronouncing a defender's name in one match taught me to listen before writing. Years later, reading my homeland's football from a city thousands of kilometres away, I still apply that lesson. I do not rush to judge a generation after a few matches, do not rush to criticise a style just because it differs from what I am used to, and do not rush to believe a number just because it is printed in bold.

Where will Vietnamese football go in the new cycle? I do not know the answer, and I think no one does for certain. But I know one thing I will follow: whether this football culture continues to develop people, or merely continues to hunt for names. A football culture that lives on names will dry up quickly. One that lives on people will find its rhythm, even if it takes a few seasons to do so.

From the World Cup to small studios, I still hear one pulse: people make the match. At sixty-five, writing from Busan, I only hope to keep that slow rhythm until my homeland's football finds its own — a rhythm that no longer needs anyone to keep it.