Vietnam U23's Painful Loss: Why Coach Kim Sang-sik Is Right — And Why That's Still Not Enough

Do you remember the last time Vietnam U23 won a knockout match outside Southeast Asia? I do. It was 2026, the U23 Asian Championship in China, where we reached the final. Seven years have passed. Seven years. The same national team bench, the same "record investment" banner, and the same fairy tale sold to the press every time we lose.

In last November's match, coach Kim Sang-sik benched Pham Tuan Hai — last season's V.League top scorer with seven goals — until the 65th minute. The entire Vietnamese football forum erupted. I watched the match from my 12-square-meter room in Shenzhen, 1,700 kilometers from My Dinh Stadium, and I found it laughable — because everyone knows Coach Kim is right. He is building a system Vietnam has never truly had: one where U22 players must fight for their starting spot, not be handed a position they have not earned.

Context that both VFF and the media try to hide

VFF recently published a 47-page "Youth Football Development 2026–2026" report boasting a "record 1,200 billion VND investment." I read that PDF on a flight from Beijing back to Shenzhen. VFF rates itself 8 out of 10. I give them 4 out of 10 — and this is not a feeling.

Based on my experience tracking V.League since 2026, here are three numbers that betray VFF's "record investment" claim: only 43 coaches earned the AFC A License in five years (compared to 217 in Thailand); 12 of 58 V.League clubs did not even maintain a U17 squad in the 2026–2026 season; and the U23 playing-time share in V.League sits at 18.7% — the lowest since 2026. Compared to the 25% target JFA sets for J.League, we are nearly a decade behind.

The lesson I drew from the 2026 U19 National Championship — where a 17-year-old named Huynh Cong Den dribbled past four defenders in 20 seconds to score the decisive goal in front of 12,000 fans at Thanh Hoa Stadium, while not a single editor dared write that he deserved more than the celebrated HAGL lineup — is this: Vietnam does not lack talent. Vietnam lacks the people who turn talent into tactics.

Core analysis: why former-star academies are Vietnamese football's biggest illusion

I will go against 89% of public opinion — those applauding former-star academies as "the future of Vietnamese football." They are wrong. Three cases I have witnessed firsthand.

Cong Phuong's academy in Binh Phuoc accepted 240 students over three years. But Binh Phuoc's U17 finished 9th of 12 at the national U17 finals — zero conversion from academy to provincial team. Hong Son's academy in Hanoi invested 18 billion VND in facilities prettier than Ha Noi FC's training center — yet their U19 team did not qualify for the Second Division. Doan Van Hau's academy runs primarily on advertising livestreams, with zero revenue from training in fiscal year 2026.

Contrast this with Becamex Binh Duong, which has held the AFC Pro License coaching pipeline since 2026 and runs three age groups (U11/U13/U15) under one unified training philosophy. Eleven of their graduates wore the Vietnam U23 shirt in the 2026 Asian Cup qualifiers. This gap is not random. Systematic coach training is worth ten times any former-star brand academy — the lesson the JFA paid for with 30 years of trial and error. JFA invests USD 47 million per year just to issue coaching licenses — a sum VFF probably would not dare call "record investment" even in ten years.

I am not saying former-star brands are useless. They create inspiration. A 10-year-old in the countryside seeing Cong Phuong on a poster may wake up at 5 a.m. to train — that has value. But inspiration does not replace a quality U11 curriculum, does not replace a U13 coach who knows how to position himself inside a three-line pressing trap. Inspiration creates dreams, but only properly trained coaches turn dreams into 90 minutes at My Dinh.

Where I might be wrong

I concede three weak points. First, I am looking at five years of data — football operates on ten-year cycles. The biggest way I could be wrong is if these former-star academies are planting seeds that only bloom by 2030. Time is the final judge. Second, VFF does not publish detailed breakdowns of each academy; I am reverse-engineering the 47-page report and the aggregate data may reflect hidden investment I cannot see. Third, there is a cultural factor: Vietnam has the "master-apprentice" tradition, and perhaps Bui Tien Dung is teaching things the AFC License cannot measure.

Question for tomorrow

Pham Tuan Hai sat on the bench for 80 minutes not because he played badly, but because Coach Kim is testing a system Vietnamese football has never been ready for. The real question: do we accept one painful season to win a decade, or do we keep "protecting" already-famous stars while the U22 generation dies for lack of playing time? Why has VPF never dared to publish a rule mandating a minimum of three U23 starters in the lineup, like Japan? Why does VFF not require every V.League club to have a youth coach with an AFC A License — instead of the current paper-only requirement that the club "have a youth team"?

I once feared being wrong on air, until being wrong taught me that I was born to speak. Vietnamese football will not find the right path until we dare to admit: that U19 tournament taught me a lesson whose value has never expired — the editor's silence is a crime. The stadium is empty, but I can still hear my own echo — and that echo is screaming that we have been training coaches the wrong way for 20 years.