Bau Duc and the Empty Column: How Can Vietnamese Football Generate Money Ahead of the VFF Congress 2026-2030

On August 6, at a hotel in central Hanoi, I sat in the fourth row of a sideline workshop preparing for the Vietnam Football Federation (VFF) Congress for the 2026-2030 term. On the large screen, a table appeared with exactly two columns: the left column listed "system operating costs," the right column was completely empty. The presenter, a veteran sports official, paused for a few seconds and said: "We will fill this column later." The room laughed it off. I did not.

Over 44 years of watching football, from a provincial newsroom in Newark to meeting rooms in Hanoi, I have learned one thing: an empty column in a table is often more honest than any number filled into it. It says that people know what they are missing, but not yet where to get it. And that is precisely the starting point of the story called Bau Duc.

Context: a statement in the right place

Doan Nguyen Duc, known nationwide as Bau Duc, Chairman of Hoang Anh Gia Lai Group and former Vice Chairman of the Vietnam Football Federation in charge of finance, has just made a statement that made the whole football world pause: Vietnamese football needs to know how to generate money. He said this as the VFF Congress for the 2026-2030 term approaches, a time when new leadership will be elected and will shape the financial strategy for an entire long cycle.

I want readers to understand one thing clearly before going further: this is not a commentary on a match. There is no tactical diagram, no expected goals metric, no referee controversy. This is a political-economic statement, issued at an inflection point in governance. Vietnamese football, at the macro level, is talking about money rather than about how to play.

The very silence about tactics in a football statement is also a source of information. When people debate revenue instead of debating formations, it means the leadership believes the biggest bottleneck lies in institutional infrastructure, not on the coaching bench. That is a reasonable hypothesis. But it is also a hypothesis that needs verification, not a default truth.

Before dissecting the financial logic of this statement, I need to place it within the frame in which it operates. The VFF Congress 2026-2030 is not just an election of personnel. It is the moment that establishes the governance model: who controls resources, who allocates cash flow, and who is accountable when that cash flow runs dry. Every statement around this moment, even when presented as sincere advice, carries political positioning. I do not say this to belittle anyone. I say it because clarity demands that we read the context of a statement, not just its content.

The core issue: financial logic right in direction but lacking in magnitude

First, the strength must be acknowledged. Bau Duc's argument has a clear structure: professionalization and commercialization demand very large financial resources; the VFF needs businessmen who know how to create cash flow, know how to manage, and especially dare to spend money. This is an argument about resource commitment, and it is right in direction.

But here I must pause and say plainly what many are reluctant to say: this speech contains not a single number. No broadcasting revenue for the V.League. No total wage bill for the clubs. No concrete figure for the investment needed to reach the World Cup goal. We have a correct diagnosis and a prescription pointing in the right direction, but no dosage.

I have sat in enough meetings to know that a financial plan without numbers is not a plan. It is a manifesto. A manifesto has inspirational value, but it cannot be checked against reality. When there is no baseline figure, the question "how much money is needed" cannot be answered, and therefore one cannot know how far one has come.

The key point is not whether Vietnamese football needs money. The key point is that the current system depends on an extremely fragile resource structure. And this is where I want to spend most of this article analyzing.

The "patron" model and hidden balance-sheet risk

The story of Bau Duc himself is a vivid case study of the financial model he is warning against. He admits he has gone through ups and downs and "had to pay the price for investment decisions." That is not a complaint. It is a structural fact.

When a football nation depends on a few wealthy individuals, the financial survival of clubs is tied tightly to the personal fortunes of those people. If a patron faces difficulties in other business areas, the club suffers directly. This is a form of concentration risk that any financial analyst would flag in red.

The biggest risk for Vietnamese football is not a lack of money. The biggest risk is that money comes from too few sources, and each source can disappear along with one person.

Bau Duc himself recognizes this when he says the problem of Vietnamese football today cannot rely only on a few academies or a few patrons. He is arguing against the very model he embodies. I read that as a conversion of viewpoint, and it deserves recognition. But it also raises a difficult question: if the person who pioneered this model now says it is not enough, what will replace it?

He proposes mobilizing corporate resources on a broad scale, spreading across youth training, facilities, nutrition, and expertise. In essence, this is a thesis about diversifying funding sources. It is reasonable. But I must warn: diversifying funding sources does not automatically mean sustainability. It only means risk is spread more thinly. If the allocation mechanism remains opaque, if governance still relies on relationships, then having more sponsors does not solve the root problem.

The academy as a national asset, and the weakness of the supply chain

The greatest strength of the HAGL model does not lie in the stadium or in the V.League table. It lies in the academy, founded in 2026, with a philosophy combining football with culture and foreign languages, in partnership with a foreign partner following a comprehensive training model.

The products of that academy have specific names: Cong Phuong, Xuan Truong, Tuan Anh, Van Toan, Van Thanh, Hong Duy. These names are not just players. They are proof that a systematic training model can produce national-level talent.

But here is where I want readers to look more closely. An academy that produces one golden generation is not a system. It is a lucky exception repeated exactly once. If the entire football nation has only a few academies of this kind, then the talent supply is concentrated in a small number of points. Any incident at one of those points affects the entire supply chain.

Look at the time cycle. The academy was founded in 2026. The first generation became famous from around 2026 onward. That means it took about seven years of investment before visible results appeared. This is a long-term investment, with a long payback period and cash-flow pressure along the way. Very few Vietnamese businesses have enough patience and financial resilience to do the same.

Investing in youth training is the longest-term investment in football, and also the first to be cut when cash flow runs into difficulty. That is a paradox that any manager must face.

My story about Cong Phuong at Mito HollyHock in 2026 is proof of the fragility of this chain. When Cong Phuong was at Mito, I understood that silence is also a source of information. He had only 6 matches and 0 goals in half a season on loan in J.League 2. No one confirmed anything. That very gap said more than any rumor. I remember having to organize a small livestream, inviting three administrators of major fan pages to analyze the release clauses together, just so everyone could look at the truth instead of arguing. When the information about the two-year contract with Ho Chi Minh City club was later confirmed, what I learned was not about a specific deal, but about how a football nation operates through a few individuals and a few decisions.

The mismatch between ambition and commercial base

This is the part of the analysis I consider most important, and also the least discussed.

Vietnamese football sets the goal of reaching the World Cup and rising to continental level. That is a legitimate and encouraging ambition. But that ambition is standing on a thin commercial base. When Bau Duc says "without money, don't talk about reaching the top," he is touching a structural truth.

A football nation can overcome budget limits through talent and organization, but it cannot overcome that limit forever without sustainable revenue.

The problem is that we are comparing a continental-level goal with a club system that has limited revenue, dependent on sponsorship and broadcasting rights at a modest level. This is the mismatch between ambition and base. It is not new. But the fact that it is publicly acknowledged by a senior figure is a notable signal.

I witnessed a similar version of this story during the COVID-19 pandemic. When COVID closed the stadiums, the V.League heard the sound of debt ringing louder than the whistle for the first time. I received a call from a club assistant about players being owed three months of wages, totaling about 4.2 billion dong, and they did not know how to disclose it without destabilizing the squad. I worked continuously for several days to draft an open letter to the leadership, naming no individuals, analyzing only wage-fund data, sponsorship contracts, and proposing a phased payment roadmap. When the parties sat down and agreed to publish the repayment schedule before the whole team, many players told me they felt more respected, and their form when football returned was much better.

Behind every contract is a fate, not a number. That COVID story taught me that a club's financial health is not a private matter for the accounting office. It is a matter for every player, every family, and every fan sitting in the stands. When Bau Duc talks about generating money, he is touching exactly this point, though he may not express it the way I do.

A governance problem dressed as finance

There is a subtle point I want to make. When Bau Duc says the VFF needs businessmen who know how to create cash flow, know how to manage, and dare to spend money, he is not only talking about money. He is talking about a governance model.

He mentions that those who spend their own money have the motivation to seek suitable management models. This is an argument about "skin in the game," about those with money bearing direct responsibility. In essence, this is an import of corporate management models into a sports organization.

But there is a legal constraint that few mention. The VFF is a social-professional organization, not a purely commercial entity. This limits the extent to which corporate-style management methods can be introduced without structural and charter reform.

You cannot manage a sports federation like a joint-stock company if the legal framework stipulates that it is not a joint-stock company. This is a barrier that any reform proposal must face, and I do not see it discussed clearly enough in the current debate.

Moreover, when a club chairman, who previously served as the federation's vice chairman in charge of finance, makes a proposal about the federation's financial model, the question of perceived conflict of interest is unavoidable. I am not saying the proposal is wrong because it comes from a club chairman. I am saying that any proposal on national resource allocation must be assessed by transparency criteria, not by the personal credibility of the proposer.

International representation as a rules-based lever

There is a part of Bau Duc's statement that I consider strategically wise, though it receives less attention than the money part. He emphasizes that Vietnamese football needs a voice in international organizations such as FIFA, AFC, and AFF, to protect interests and grasp trends.

This is a very noteworthy point. Positions on international committees are not merely honorary. They correlate directly with the ability to influence scheduling, slot allocation, and development funding. In other words, it is an advantage in the rules of the game, not just prestige.

In modern football, influence in international meeting rooms is worth as much as a revenue stream, because it shapes the very playing field on which you are earning money.

I find this proposal practically valuable. But I must also warn that international positions are typically allocated through nominations by member associations, and therefore depend on internal political relationships. Winning these positions is not a purely technical decision. It is a process of building credibility and alliances over many years.

A counterintuitive angle: the blind spot of the official story

Now I want to offer an angle that may make some people uncomfortable, but I believe it is necessary.

The official story being told is this: Vietnamese football has achieved considerable success, from U23-level titles up to the national team; that success needs to be converted into structural reform; and that reform revolves around money and governance.

I agree with most of it. But there is a big blind spot in the way this story is told.

When an entire football nation focuses its attention on money and governance, it tends to forget the technical development path: coach education, playing philosophy, and the youth competition system.

The recent success of Vietnamese football did not come only from money. It came from a generation of talented players trained in a specific model, and from a competition organization system capable of producing results beyond expectations. If the reform discussion revolves only around money, we risk forgetting the more important question: after the current generation, who will be next?

There is a truth I have observed over many years. Football nations that overcome budget limits to succeed usually do so through the quality of coaching and tactical organization, not through the amount of money spent. That is an inconvenient truth for an argument that money is the decisive factor.

I do not deny the role of money. I only say that the argument "without money, don't talk about reaching the top" needs to be supplemented by a parallel argument: "with money but without a development philosophy, money will not produce the top either."

A second blind spot relates to timing. This statement was made before the VFF Congress. Politically, it is a tool for shaping public opinion, aimed at influencing delegate sentiment and the leadership platform. I read it as positioning, not merely advice. That does not make the content wrong, but it reminds us that every statement in football has two layers: the technical layer and the political layer.

A third blind spot, and perhaps the most important, relates to long-term vision. Recent success creates a "window of reform legitimacy." When the national team wins, people are willing to listen to new ideas. But that window is narrow. If reform is not institutionalized now within this cycle, it will depend on specific individuals, and will disappear along with them.

At my age, I no longer hunt for news, I hunt for the truth lying at the bottom of rumors. And the truth I found here is this: the story about money is obscuring a story about institutions, and the story about institutions is obscuring a story about people.

What comes next

I want to close with a few constructive judgments, not a summary.

There are three scenarios for the near future of Vietnamese football in the 2026-2030 cycle. The first is governance gridlock: the Congress takes place but produces no substantive reform, investment continues below the necessary level, and Vietnamese football stands still while regional rivals advance. Identification sign: statements pointing in the right direction but with no numbers and no roadmap.

The second is incremental reform: businesses participate more, management is partially modernized, and Vietnamese football gains more international voice but still has not changed the root structure. Identification sign: the appearance of public figures on revenue and wage funds.

The third is institutionalized reform: the Congress adopts a clear commercialization and socialization platform, accompanied by a transparency mechanism, and Vietnamese football secures specific roles within AFC and AFF structures. Identification sign: the emergence of verifiable financial regulations, not just statements of vision.

I do not know which scenario will materialize. No one does. But I know which signs to watch.

The transfer market has no away games, only people who have not yet learned to read the map. And Vietnamese football is standing at a crossroads where the map has not yet been drawn. The empty column in that table in Hanoi that day was not an oversight. It was a confession. The question for the 2026-2030 term is not whether Vietnamese football wants to generate money. The question is who will be responsible for filling that column, with which number, and on which date.