The 90+4 Winner and the Void Behind the Bicycle Kick

On the evening of October 18, at Bà Rịa stadium, Daniel Dos Anjos threw himself into a bicycle kick in the fourth minute of stoppage time. The ball arced over the CLB TP.HCM goalkeeper's shoulder, Becamex TP.HCM won 2-1, and the small stand of a Hạng Nhất fixture suddenly cracked open into the sound of people calling a name they were not used to calling. I was sitting in the fifth row, the seat I usually choose because it is far enough to see an entire passing lane and close enough to hear a substitute breathe. And what I heard, before the roar, was the sound of an older man standing up too quickly, his plastic chair crying out under his weight.

I have watched a great many matches. Enough to know that the 90+4 minute is not where a story begins, but where it is exposed.

This was round three of the 2026-2027 Hạng Nhất season. Becamex TP.HCM had 7 points from three matches, sat fourth, level on points with Hưng Yên and Khánh Hòa but behind both on goal difference, and two points adrift of leaders Thái Nguyên. Those numbers, read only from the table, would build a very different story: a title contender on the right track. But the table does not tell stories. It only records the results of things that happened in a place the table cannot see.

That evening, Becamex fell behind. The goal came from a careless back pass by Nguyễn Hùng Thiện Đức, which the home side read and punished. I wrote that detail into my notebook, next to a line I always write when I see a team coached by a Spaniard: "plays out from the back." Gerard Albadalejo builds his game on short build-up, control, patience. It is a beautiful philosophy. But every philosophy has a day when it is tested by a side willing to sit deep and set a trap.

In the 64th minute, Hoàng Vũ Samson came on for Bùi Văn Bình. Minutes later he drove forward, had his shirt pulled, and the referee pointed to the spot. Dos Anjos equalised from it. Then, in the 90+4 minute, Hà Đức Chinh contested an aerial ball, it dropped, and Dos Anjos threw himself into a bicycle kick for his second goal of the match.

I stayed in my seat long after the final whistle. Not to write about the bicycle kick. But to understand why a team with that squad had to wait until the 94th minute to win a match they were rated as clearly stronger in.

In three decades of watching Vietnamese football, I have learned one thing: a strong squad does not automatically produce a strong performance. And Becamex TP.HCM, at this moment, is proof of that gap.

Look at the men on the bench that night. Hoàng Vũ Samson, naturalised, a forward who was a nightmare for V.League 1 defences for years. Hà Đức Chinh, a man who has worn the national shirt. A Hạng Nhất club with two names like that on the bench is an anomaly. An anomaly so pronounced that it becomes the only explanation for this victory.

Both goals came from players who came on. The first from the penalty Samson won. The second from Đức Chinh's aerial challenge, dropping the ball for Dos Anjos. This was not the victory of a tactical system; it was the victory of bench quality. And that distinction matters far more than people usually think when they rewatch a beautiful goal.

Because bench quality is an asset that can be lost. A system cannot, if it truly exists.

I remember an afternoon in Russia, in 2026, sitting in the Luzhniki stands watching Modric run in the 117th minute. What I learned that day was not about fitness. It was about how a team can survive moments when their system has run dry. Croatia did not win with a system in that minute. They won with the men still standing. But Croatia also did not build a season on waiting for the 117th minute.

Becamex is doing exactly that. Three matches, 7 points, a thinner goal difference than two teams on the same points. A goal in the 94th minute. A penalty in the 64th. Added together, these signs paint a picture that is not necessarily bad, but certainly not the picture anyone in the club's boardroom wants on the wall.

And this is where I want to linger, because it is the blind spot of collective memory.

When a team wins in the 90+4 minute, collective memory records resilience. It calls it character, spirit, "never giving up." Those words are true, to a degree. But they obscure a harder truth: a team that repeatedly needs the 90+4 minute to win is a team that does not control the match in the first 90. These two things are not mutually exclusive. They coexist, and the tension between them is where a season is decided.

In Hạng Nhất, where goal difference is the first tiebreaker when teams are level on points, the difference between a 2-1 win and a 4-1 win is not aesthetics. It is points at the end of the season. With three teams on 7 points, every goal missed in a narrow win can become the thing that decides who goes up in May.

I have seen this happen many times. Teams that win by waiting rarely complete the journey. Not because they are weak. Because football does not permit waiting for too long.

There is one detail from the match I cannot ignore, small as it is.

Becamex's concession came from a back pass. In a match where your team is rated as clearly stronger, falling behind to an individual error at the back is a sign of a systemic problem, not an accident. If Albadalejo genuinely believes in building from the back, and if other teams in the division know how to set pressing traps, then this is a weakness that will be exploited again and again. Not every week. But often enough to become a problem the coach must solve before it solves him.

And there is another detail, larger, that I think few people noticed.

Becamex TP.HCM are playing in Hạng Nhất with a squad priced for V.League 1. Players who have worn the national shirt. A Brazilian import forward. A naturalised forward counted as a domestic player, in a division where the foreign-player quota is tightly restricted. That is a legal advantage, but it is still an advantage that deserves to be named.

With Dos Anjos occupying the foreign slot and Samson counting as domestic, Becamex effectively have two import-quality forwards while spending only one slot. That is a structural distortion, and it holds only as long as Dos Anjos is on the pitch.

Because both goals that night were scored by the same man.

This is the biggest risk, and it is not tactical. If Dos Anjos is injured or suspended, Becamex cannot replace him with a player of the same calibre, because the Hạng Nhất foreign quota does not allow it. The January window will not be an opportunity to upgrade. It will be a damage-limitation exercise.

I think about the people who built this squad. They did exactly what a promotion project should do: they brought in players better than the division's standard, built a deep squad, and set promotion as a non-negotiable condition. But that structure is sustainable only if the club actually goes up. Hạng Nhất revenue cannot service a wage bill designed for V.League 1. This is something football professionals understand very well but rarely say out loud: at some clubs, the season is not a race. It is a gamble.

Albadalejo, a Spaniard, is coaching in the second tier of Vietnamese football. That says something about the club's ambition, and also about the patience they may be willing to give him. Foreign coaches usually receive a shorter tolerance window than they need to build a playing style. That night's win bought him time. It did not buy him a system.

I wonder what will happen when this team meets Thái Nguyên, two points ahead, or Hưng Yên and Khánh Hòa, level on points with better goal difference. When the opponent is no longer a CLB TP.HCM playing at Bà Rịa, nearly a hundred kilometres from the city whose name they carry. When the pressure is no longer the pressure of an October evening, but the pressure of a season defined by whether they go up.

Because Vietnamese football has a mechanism few outsiders know about: promotion is not only about winning on the pitch. It is also about paperwork. Whether the stadium meets standard, whether the floodlights are adequate, whether a youth academy exists, whether the finances are audited. I have watched clubs win the league on the pitch and then sit at home because they failed the licensing criteria. That is an ending no one wants to write, but it is real, and it is waiting at the end of this season.

The detail about Bà Rịa stadium made me pause. A club carrying the name of Ho Chi Minh City playing home fixtures in Bà Rịa - Vũng Tàu. And in the same division, another club carrying the name Ho Chi Minh City. Two clubs, one city name, and a home ground a distance from that name. This is the story of relocation and rebranding happening quietly in the lower tier of Vietnamese football, where urban brands are attached to clubs operating outside the cities they name.

I do not know whether Becamex TP.HCM is a renamed club, a relocated club, or a new entity. But I know the question needs answering before the season ends, not after. Because if you win the league and cannot go up because your home ground was not approved, then the bicycle kick in the 90+4 minute becomes a far more bitter memory than a beautiful goal.

That night, I left Bà Rịa stadium when the lights were almost out. A man in a Becamex shirt stood at the gate, talking to someone on the phone, his voice breaking with joy. He was not talking about goal difference. He was not talking about the foreign quota. He just said: "He bicycle-kicked it, man. He bicycle-kicked it."

I understand why he said that. The moment was real, and it was beautiful. But a season is not built from moments. It is built from what happens in the minutes no one remembers. Football is like that: when the ball slows down, I can see how many human destinies it carries. And among those destinies, there is a club walking a thin wire between glory and a season forgotten.

Becamex TP.HCM will be promoted. Or they will not. But before answering that question, they must answer a harder one: can this team win a match without needing the 90+4 minute?

Because the goal of a loser can make a whole stadium stand. But a team that only knows how to win at the last minute will eventually meet a match where the last minute does not come.