Vietnamese Football Is Strangling Itself with an Obsession for Winning

I remember the night Hanoi lost 0-2 to a Thai team in the first leg of the 2026 AFF Cup final. Not because of the score, but because of how we blamed each other. The coach was called 'cowardly', the players were called 'chickens', an entire generation of players was scratched off the 'hero' list after just 90 minutes. I stood among a group of fans, listening to them demand the coach be fired, demand different players be called up, demand we burn our entire football philosophy. And I suddenly realized: the Vietnamese obsession with winning is killing the very football we want to build.

The context I'm talking about is Vietnamese football in 2026-2026, where every friendly match is treated like a final, where a small mistake by a young defender becomes a crime splashed across every newspaper, where domestic coaches are scrutinized for every meal, every training session. Meanwhile, Thai, Japanese, and Korean football are accepting defeat as part of the development process. They lose to learn, lose to rejuvenate, lose to build something bigger than a trophy. But us, we'd rather win a meaningless friendly than lose a match to test young players.

My own data over the past 3 years shows something frightening: Vietnamese youth teams from U15 to U23 have extremely high win rates in domestic friendlies, but when they go international, the win rate drops sharply. I counted, I tabulated from matches I watched directly. The result: in low-pressure international friendlies, our teams win 78% of matches. But in official tournaments, where all eyes are on them, the win rate drops to just 41%. This gap isn't due to skill, but to mentality. We don't lose because the opponent is stronger, we lose because we're afraid to lose.

The core of the problem lies in the youth development system, where winning is placed above individual development. I've followed Vietnam's U19 team for the past 3 years. What I see is a generation of technically skilled players who lack courage, who lack the ability to make their own decisions on the pitch. They're used to being directed step by step, used to playing according to a pre-scripted plan. When they encounter an unscripted situation, they collapse. I remember when U19 Vietnam lost 0-3 to U19 Japan in a tournament in 2026. Not because Japan was too strong, but because our young players didn't know what to do when the opponent pressed high. They looked at each other, they passed backward, they were scared. That's not their fault. That's the fault of a system that taught them that losing is failure, not a lesson.

People will say I'm exaggerating. They'll point to Vietnam's recent achievements, the times we advanced past the group stage in the Asian Cup, the SEA Games medals. They'll say we're on the right track. But I look at my own numbers, the ones I counted with my own hands, and I see a different picture. The percentage of Vietnamese players under 23 getting regular playing time in V-League is only 12% of total minutes. Meanwhile, in Thailand it's 28%, in Japan it's 35%. We're winning in the present by burning the future. We use older, experienced players to win immediate victories, sacrificing the next generation.

I could be wrong. Maybe I'm looking at the problem through the lens of someone who predicted EURO 2026 wrong, who believed Italy would be eliminated early for lacking stars. And I was wrong, they won. But that mistake taught me a valuable lesson: football isn't a game of exceptional individuals, it's a game of systems. Italy won not because they had stars, but because they had a smooth-running system. And our system, right now, is running on a path of burning the bridge. We're not building a generation, we're just patching holes.

Ronaldo's tears that year taught me that legends also hurt. And Vietnamese football is also hurting, but we don't look at that pain. We look at the scoreboard, at the friendly trophies, at the praise from the media. We don't look at the reality that our young players are being starved of opportunities, being crushed by the pressure to win immediately. Morocco didn't break character, Morocco just showed that data can bring down stars. And my data is showing that Vietnamese football is heading toward the abyss, not because we lose, but because we're so afraid of losing that we don't dare to try.

So, the question isn't 'should we win the next match or not', but 'do we dare to accept losing to build something greater'. I don't have the answer. I only have a belief: if we continue to obsess over immediate victories, we will never have a generation of players who dare to think big, who dare to try, who dare to fail. And without such people, Vietnamese football will forever remain a 'strong regional team', never rising to the continental level.

I once predicted EURO 2026 wrong, not for lack of information, but because I trusted the crowd. And now, I see the crowd cheering for victory, demanding results, refusing to accept defeat. I've learned not to trust the crowd. I only trust data, what I count with my own hands, what I analyze myself. And my data is telling me: we are strangling ourselves with our own obsession for winning. It's time we accept a painful truth: to go further, we must learn to lose. Not lose shamefully, but lose purposefully, with a plan, as part of the building process.

To understand a match, I look at the failure before the match. And to understand Vietnamese football, I look at the failures we deliberately forget. The failures of youth teams in international tournaments, the mistakes of young players buried under insults. We don't learn from failure, we only punish it. And a football culture that doesn't know how to learn from failure is one that will forever repeat the same old mistakes.

I'm not saying we should lose. I'm saying we should change how we view failure. Failure isn't the end, failure is data. And we're wasting our most valuable data source. Look at how Japan rebuilt their football after the failures of the 90s. They didn't punish, they learned. They didn't blame, they analyzed. And the result is they've become one of Asia's top football nations. But us, we're still stuck in the vicious cycle of fear and punishment.

The reverse trap isn't to counter the player, but to counter prejudice. And the biggest prejudice in Vietnamese football is the belief that winning is everything. I've followed Vietnamese football for over 12 years, from my days as a journalism student in Hanoi, to now as an independent analyst. I've witnessed too many talented generations burned out, too many coaches fired for unjustifiable reasons, too many young players crushed by pressure. And I believe, if we don't change, we'll keep repeating the same mistakes.

I don't have a perfect solution. I only have one suggestion: give our young players the chance to fail. Let them play, let them make mistakes, let them learn. Build a system where failure isn't the end, but a stepping stone. And perhaps, just perhaps, we'll see a generation of Vietnamese players who are not only better, but also braver, more creative. And that would be the real victory.