The Season Without Stars: When Vietnamese Football Learns to Wait for a Gem

Hoa Xuan Stadium was so quiet that I could hear the ball sigh.

I arrived forty minutes early. The floodlights were not yet on. The grass was heavy with dew, and the groundskeeper was sweeping fallen leaves with an old broom, each stroke sounding like a rest in a piece of music no one had yet written lyrics for. There was no one in Stand B. No one in Stand A. Only me, at sixty-seven, sitting in the very seat I had once sat in by mistake seven years earlier — the seat that made me lose my way, and the seat that made me meet a boy who drew the letter S on the pitch.

People often ask me why I come to the stadium so early. I do not answer. Because the answer lies in this very silence: a stadium before the ball, a stand before the crowd, a poem before the words. Football, for me, begins there — at the moment when nothing has happened yet, and precisely because of that, everything is possible.

This season, I want to tell you a different story. Not a story about stars. Not a story about million-dollar contracts. But a story about rough gems quietly being polished in corners no one looks at — and about a football nation learning patience with itself.

Context: A season that lives on the breath of the unproven

Vietnamese football enters the annual season in a strange state. After the continental peak the national team brought home in early 2026 — the ASEAN Championship title, when we beat Thailand 5-3 on aggregate over two final legs, in which Nguyen Xuan Son scored in both legs and then suffered a serious injury in the second — fans have the right to dream bigger. But football, like an old man, does not dream. Football only remembers.

And what Vietnamese football remembers, every season, is a bare truth: we have many good players, but very few players who are loved the right way. We have explosive matches, but very few clubs with sustainable foundations. We have passionate fans, but very few structures patient enough to nurture a person from fifteen to twenty-five.

I have covered eight Olympic Games, eight World Cups, and many editions of the Giro d'Italia and the Tour de France. I have seen great sporting nations build their systems from the bottom up — from the grass of a village, from the dressing room of a third-division team, from the eyes of a young coach. Vietnamese football, at this moment, stands before exactly such a crossroads. And what is worth noting is that the crossroads is not about money, but about patience.

In the last three matches of a young team I follow, the PPDA — passes allowed per defensive action — fell from 12.4 to 9.1. That means the team is pressing higher, daring to bet more on youth. It is a small tactical signal, but to me it is like a sign of spring: something stirring beneath frozen ground.

Core: A match is decided by what is never replayed

I want to tell you about a summer afternoon in 2026, when I was fifty-eight and still young enough to lose my way.

That day I went to Hoa Xuan Stadium to watch U19 SHB Da Nang face U19 Ha Noi. The first half was so dull I nearly left. Nothing to remember, nothing to write. But then, in the 73rd minute, a number 10 for the home side named Dang Van Toi produced a touch with the outside of his right boot. The ball drew a curve like the letter "S" before striking the post.

I did not know who he was. I only knew my heart was racing as if I had heard a strange poem.

After the match, I searched every roster, replayed the video twelve times in slow motion, and wrote the piece "The Boy Who Drew the Letter S on the Pitch." That article was read by the U19 head coach, and he called the boy up to the national U19 squad. That was the moment I understood something I would carry for the rest of my life: a match is not decided by what the cameras replay, but by what people are patient enough to see.

Since then, I never begin an article with the scoreline. A scoreline belongs to the news ticker. A match belongs to memory. And memory, as you know, never records the scoreline. Memory records a bowed head, a goalkeeper's darting glance, a stray touch in the fourth minute of stoppage time.

This is what I want to say about this season. We are obsessed with the spectacular. We turn on the television and wait for back-heels, long-range strikes, goals rebuilt from twelve camera angles. We call that football. But true football lies elsewhere: in a team's macro control, in the vision of a midfielder who knows where to stand before the ball arrives, in the alertness of a back line that knows to drop three metres when the opponent changes direction.

I recall a line of Luka Modric's that I once quoted on television, during the 2026 World Cup quarter-final between Russia and Croatia. I called his pass "a low note of a cello amid a choir of falling snow." Netizens immediately made memes of "a poet who wandered onto the pitch." They said I was reading poetry instead of commentating. But a week later, thousands shared the audio of my commentary in extra time — when Vida scored, I was silent for seven seconds, then said: "The Russians drowned in their own winter, and the Croats embraced the cold like a gift." The sports channel director called me: "Keep doing it your way. The audience hates it and keeps watching."

Being called a poet on television is something I am proud of — the ball was always poetry. And what I learned that night was not whether to stay silent or speak more, but this: the difference of a storyteller is that storyteller's greatest asset.

This is true of Vietnamese players too. In a football nation where every club wants to buy a foreign striker, wants a star who scores thirty goals a season, we inadvertently forget the value of those who make the difference in other ways: a centre-back who can read the game, a midfielder who can hold the rhythm, a goalkeeper who knows where he must stand. Those people do not appear on the scoreboard. But they are the reason the scoreboard exists.

Analysis: The rough gem and the hunger of ambition

At sixty-seven, I still believe in magic, because I have seen a gem find itself in the mud.

A rough gem does not need polishing, only an eye patient enough to love it. I have said this many times, to the point where some say I am repeating myself. But the truth is: every gem is a different story, and a good storyteller is not one who retells the old story, but one who sees a new vein in every stone.

Look at how V.League clubs build their squads this season. A pattern repeats: buy a foreign striker to score, buy a foreign midfielder to create, and let young Vietnamese players sit on the bench. I understand the economic logic — immediate results, safety for the coach's job, and a little success to sell tickets. But what is the price?

The price is that we are producing players who do not know how to take responsibility. A young striker growing up in Vietnamese football, from fifteen to twenty-two, is usually only sent on in the seventieth minute, when the team is already winning or already losing. He never lives inside the decisive moment. And when he steps onto the international stage, he has no memory to lean on.

I remember the story of Nguyen Xuan Son — the naturalised Brazilian-origin player who became a symbol of Vietnam at the 2026 ASEAN Championship. But I want you to notice a detail rarely mentioned: his journey did not begin under a spotlight, but in small tournaments, quiet training sessions, years when no one remembered his name. He is a rough gem in the truest sense — not because he came from far away, but because he waited long enough to be seen.

And here is the crux: a football nation is measured not by the number of stars it produces, but by the number of people it dares to trust. We can buy a striker who scores twenty goals a season. But we cannot buy a generation. That generation can only grow from patience — from giving a twenty-year-old ten consecutive starts, even when he plays badly, even when the fans jeer, even when the coach is sacked.

Based on my experience watching matches, I notice something interesting about Vietnamese youth football: teams that dare to start young players often do not win immediately, but after three to four years, they have a generation. Conversely, teams that only buy stars often win once and then fall apart. Football is a sport of long memory, not of short pleasure.

One evening, I sat at home rewatching a match I had once commentated years ago. I muted the sound, letting the images speak for themselves. And what I realised was this: the best passages of play are not the ones that make fans stand up. They are the ones that make fans fall silent. A through-ball that makes the whole stadium hold its breath. A save that makes people forget where they are sitting.

That boy did not need tactics, he needed someone who could read the hunger of his ambition.

Contrarian angle: What Vietnamese football is looking at wrongly

I want to say something that may upset many people. But I am at an age where one no longer fears upsetting people.

First, Vietnamese football is sanctifying the goalkeeper's distribution. We revel in a keeper's accurate long passes as if that were the sole measure of a modern goalkeeper. But the truth is: a goalkeeper with good distribution but declining basic reflexes can still be valued in the transfer market at many times the price of a keeper with outstanding reflexes but ordinary passing. The market pays for beauty, not for necessity. And a team that builds its defence on the keeper's distribution rather than his reflexes is building a house on sand.

Second, shirt advertising is gradually destroying the link between clubs and local communities. I remember the days when a Vietnamese club's shirt bore the name of a brand tied to that city — a local bank, a regional brewery, a name the people of the neighbourhood knew and loved. Now the shirt is a mobile billboard, and global sponsors care only about exposure ROI — they want the logo on television, not whether the club nurtures a single local child. When a club loses its community roots, it loses its reason to exist. And a team with no reason to exist cannot have a reason to win.

Third, we confuse "the spectacular" with "class." A player who dribbles past three men makes the crowd roar. But a player who knows when to pass, when to hold, when to run into space — that player decides the match. Modern football, at the highest level, is not a contest of individual touches. It is a contest of vision and control. And in Vietnam, too many of us still mistake "total combat flair" for a high-class match.

I know these words may sound harsh. But I say them with love, not contempt. I have spent more than fifty years watching football, and I have learned that a true lover of the game is not one who always praises, but one who dares to point out where it hurts.

The stands are empty, but history still needs an audience to recount its most beautiful sorrow.

A story from the margins: The lottery-ticket seller and the old tea lady

I want to tell you about a man I spent weeks interviewing.

He sells lottery tickets at the gate of Hoa Xuan Stadium. Every match day, he arrives at four in the afternoon, carrying a stack of tickets and a plastic chair. He does not watch football — he is busy selling tickets. But he knows the name of every player, knows who is injured, knows which team is in crisis. I asked him why he remembers all that. He smiled: "Because my customers remember. And if I don't remember, they won't buy my tickets anymore."

That is a profound football philosophy no tactical analyst can teach you. Football exists because someone remembers. And those who remember the most are often those on the margins of the pitch — the ticket seller, the tea lady, the parking attendant, the child selling candy. They are the first to arrive and the last to leave. They are the audience of history.

The old tea lady on the corner of Le Duan Street in Da Nang has sat there for thirty years. She remembers every generation of SHB Da Nang players who passed through. She told me about a striker who once scored four goals in a match, then vanished from football through injury. She told me about a defender who played for the national team, then went home to open a coffee shop. She told me about people no one writes books about, no one makes films about.

In those people, I see my own fate. Born on the other side of a border, working on this side of the border. Reporting on matches I could never play in. Standing on the margins of history, looking in, trying to retell what I see.

There is one thing I always believe: the best stories are not at the centre, but at the margins. Not with the winner, but with the loser. Not in the goal, but in the bowed head after a conceded goal.

I spent seven years on television to prove one thing: a match told the right way ought to be a ninety-minute poem. And that poem is not about stars. It is about people.

Patience as a strategy

I want to return to the story of Dang Van Toi — the boy who drew the letter S on the pitch in 2026.

After my article was published, he was called up to the U19 national team. He played a few matches, scored a few goals, then got injured. Then recovered. Then got injured again. Vietnamese football, with all its fervour and impatience, forgot him within two years. I followed him through small tournaments, training sessions in his hometown, matches with no spectators.

One afternoon, I called him. I asked: "Do you regret not becoming a star?"

He was silent a moment, then said: "I don't need to become a star. I just need to play."

That answer reminded me of something I wrote years ago: a rough gem does not need polishing, only an eye patient enough to love it. Vietnamese football lacks that eye. We have money, fans, passion. But we lack patience — the patience to watch a player struggle for three matches and still believe in him in the fourth. The patience to wait for a generation to grow up. The patience to understand that football is a sport of the long term, not of short-term results.

This is why I believe this season, though no star truly shines, may be the most important season in years. Because sometimes the absence of a star is the chance to see the gems. When there is no one to cheer, we are forced to learn how to see. When there is no one to praise, we are forced to learn how to love.

I have seen this happen in many sports. In the great cycling tours, when a great rider retires, an entire new generation is born from that void. At the Olympic Games, when a legend departs, people discover figures never mentioned before. A void is not a loss. A void is space for what has not yet been seen.

A view from the exile: a voice for the outsider

There is something I rarely say, but I want to share it with you today.

I was born in China, and I live in Vietnam. I report on football for the Vietnamese. Sometimes I feel like an outsider — in both places. In China, I am the one who left. In Vietnam, I am the one who arrived. And in football, I am the one standing at the edge, looking in, trying to retell.

But that very position gave me a gift: I see what those on the inside do not see. I feel a special empathy with substitutes, small clubs, people pushed to the margins of the pitch — because I am one of them. I know the feeling of sitting on history's bench. I know the feeling of watching others shine while I stay silent. I know the feeling of a gem not yet seen.

And perhaps that is why I write. Not to praise the winner, but to tell the story of those who are never told. Not to honour what is already honoured, but to find beauty in what is forgotten.

Vietnamese football has many such people. Players in the first division, never televised. Young coaches teaching football to children in rural areas. Mothers taking their kids to training every weekend under the forty-degree Da Nang sun. Those people do not appear on the front page. But they are the foundation of everything.

At sixty-seven, I still believe in magic, because I have seen a gem find itself in the mud.

Takeaway: Freezing memory, opening the future

I returned to Hoa Xuan Stadium on an evening of the new season.

The floodlights were on. The stands were full. And I sat in my very seat — the seat in Stand B, where I had once lost my way seven years earlier.

The match began. There was no star on the pitch. Only twenty-two young people, running, trying, writing poems no one had yet read.

And I sat there, at sixty-seven, listening.

I listened to the ball rolling on the grass. I listened to the crowd inhale as a through-ball was played. I listened to the silence after a miss. I listened to what is not recorded, what is not replayed, what will vanish from collective memory by the next morning.

And I understood one thing: football does not need stars. Football needs storytellers. Football needs someone patient enough to see the gem before it is polished. Football needs someone who believes that, amid the mud, there is always a light waiting to be seen.

This season, I am not looking for stars. I am looking for people. I am looking for untold stories. I am looking for rough gems quietly growing in corners no one looks at.

And if you ask me why I come to the stadium forty minutes early, I will answer: because I want to hear the ball sigh before the match begins. Because I want to see the stands empty before they are full. Because I want to remember that, before there is a star, there is always a boy standing before the post, and before there is a legend, there is always a gem not yet seen.

Vietnamese football stands before a crossroads. We can choose the path of bought stars, of short-term success, of joys rebuilt from twelve camera angles. Or we can choose the path of patience — the longer road, the harder road, the less glamorous road, but the more enduring one.

I believe we will choose the second. Not because it is easy, but because it is right. And because, in some corner of Hoa Xuan Stadium, there is always a boy drawing the letter S on the pitch, waiting for an eye patient enough to love.

The stands are empty, but history still needs an audience to recount its most beautiful sorrow.

And I — a football poet nearing seventy, an outsider standing at the edge of the pitch, one born on the far side of a border but writing for the ball on this side — I will keep sitting here, listening, and retelling.

Until the last gem finds itself.

Until the ball stops rolling.

And even when it stops rolling, I will still tell the story.