V-League Doesn't Lack Money — It Lacks Patience

Every time V-League closes a season, people count which club spent the most money. Nobody counts which club was the most patient. And precisely because nobody counts, nobody notices that Vietnamese football has been paying for that impatience with seasons that look identical to one another: a few big clubs racing to buy stars, a few small clubs surviving by selling players, and behind it all, academies left to starve. I have sat in the stands of enough Vietnamese stadiums to know that V-League's problem was never a lack of money. It is a lack of patience. The context needs to be made clear so nobody misunderstands. Vietnamese football has an interesting paradox: the economic foundation of V-League is not poor. Big clubs such as Hà Nội FC, Thể Công Viettel, Becamex Bình Dương, or Đông Á Thanh Hóa all have backing from large corporations, and their budgets are not small by Southeast Asian standards. But money is not poured into the hardest place. It is poured into the fastest place: the contract of a foreign striker with a track record, a domestic star at the peak of form, a loan deal that generates an immediate media effect. I remember clearly the year 2026, when I was still writing for a new sports outlet. V-League closed, and the whole press praised a club for building a youth academy. I wrote the opposite: the club should sell captain Nguyễn Văn Quyết to rebuild the academy. When I sat down with the squad list, I counted eleven players who had come up through the academy, and only one of them was a regular starter. That was the moment I understood that praise for youth development in Vietnam is mostly praise for image, not for real opportunity. An academy can thrive very well in the media, but if its players are not given minutes, that academy is only producing pretty photographs. The year 2026 was when Vietnamese football received its clearest answer. The Vietnam U23 team reached the final of the AFC U23 Championship, and the generation that produced that feat came mostly from a single academy. After that, the national team won the AFF Suzuki Cup. But the notable thing is this: that answer came from an academy that had been invested in patiently and properly, not from an expensive contract. Vietnamese football has a spending model I call the inverted model: it spends the most on the most visible part, and the least on the least visible part. The contract of a foreign striker has immediate media value — it sells shirts, sells tickets, and generates a headline. Meanwhile, the cost of maintaining a youth academy — scholarships, housing, nutrition, medical care, coaching staff — generates no headline at all. So when a board has to choose between two expenses, it usually chooses the one that can be seen. The problem with this model is not that it is emotionally wrong. It is that it is structurally wrong. First, let us talk about the striker position. V-League depends on foreign players in the scoring position more than most leagues in the region. There is a reason: a foreign striker can adapt faster than a young domestic player who needs time. But the price is that domestic players get no chance to play in the most important position. And when the national team needs a striker, we realize we have let clubs solve that problem with other people's money for years. The same thing happens in the goalkeeper position — and this is where I have more right to speak than others, because I once stood in the goalmouth. For many years, V-League has sanctified the goalkeeper's ability to distribute the ball. Academies teach young goalkeepers to play with their feet before they teach them to catch the ball. Clubs pay high prices for a goalkeeper who can hit accurate long balls. But when I look at actual saves — the thing a goalkeeper truly has to do — I see a gap. Basic reflexes, reading situations, commanding the defensive line — the things that generate no highlight — are undervalued. A goalkeeper whose reflexes have declined can still carry a high transfer price, simply because he distributes beautifully. That is a mispricing, and it comes from the same disease: we reward visible beauty, not visible effectiveness. Now let us talk about the domestic transfer market. This is where I believe real value lies with small clubs, not big ones. When a big club buys a star, it is buying a brand — a name already built, an image already verified, a level of fame already measured. It is not buying potential; it is buying certainty, and it pays a price for that certainty. By contrast, small clubs have no budget to buy certainty. They are forced to buy potential — an unproven young player, an unknown name, a player discarded by another club. And precisely for that reason, they are often the first to discover real value. I have watched many matches in small stadiums, where the stands hold only a few thousand people. There, I saw young players play with a freedom that stars at big clubs no longer have. They are not afraid of losing a place, because they have no place to lose. That is the best environment for a player to grow. And that is why I believe the most valuable contracts in V-League are not at the big clubs, but at the small clubs that know how to be patient. A contract is only a promise in a frame, while the truth always lies outside the frame. The context of the annual season also plays a role. In a league where the title race and the relegation battle run in parallel, the pressure for results is enormous. A coach has no time to be patient with a young player. He needs a result in the very next match, because three straight defeats can cost him his job. So, quite rationally, he picks the experienced player. And once every coach does that, nobody dares to be the first to give a young player a chance. This is a collective problem — the kind an individual cannot solve alone, because whoever breaks the loop is punished first. Over the years, I learned one thing from a match I will never forget: do not judge a team by the most visible thing. On the night in Kazan in 2026, a team had more possession, more shots, and lost. That lesson applies directly to V-League: a club can dominate possession, can dominate the statistics, and still lose the long race, because it built its house on sand. Possession is not power. And an expensive star is not a strategy. Let us be blunt about the investment figures. A proper youth academy needs at least five to seven years to produce a player good enough to start in V-League. During that time, there is no result to show off, no revenue to report. By contrast, a foreign contract can be signed in a week and produce an effect in one match. This asymmetry of time is the deepest reason clubs choose the short path. Not because they do not understand the value of youth development — they understand it very well. But because their incentive mechanism does not reward patience. This is the point I want to make to the people running Vietnamese football: the problem is not a lack of understanding, but a lack of mechanism. A club cannot change the system alone. It needs an award system, a points system, a financial mechanism that encourages the use of young players. Without that, anyone who tries to be patient will be eliminated from the game by those who are not patient. And here is the most concrete evidence I can offer. In 2026, the Vietnam U23 team reached the final of the AFC U23 Championship, facing U23 Uzbekistan. They lost 1-2 after extra time, in falling snow. But that generation — the names all of Asia had to remember — came mostly from a single academy invested in properly for years. Names such as Nguyễn Công Phượng, Nguyễn Tuấn Anh, Lương Xuân Trường, and Nguyễn Văn Toàn all grew up in the same academy. That same year, the national team won the AFF Suzuki Cup, beating Malaysia 3-2 on aggregate over two legs of the final. Those are achievements that cannot be bought with a contract. They were built with time. And I must speak about my own profession. Vietnamese sports media is also part of the problem. We write about an expensive contract more than we write about an academy. We count goals more than we count the minutes a young player gets. A headline about a new star joining a club will get more reads than an analysis of a club's youth program. I am not outside that problem; I am part of it. But at least I can say I have tried to go against it. But I may be wrong, and I want to be clear about where I may be wrong. First: perhaps the buy-a-star model is actually more effective than I think. In a league with limited budgets like V-League, buying an established player may be the cheapest way to earn a continental competition slot, and that slot brings money, prestige, and survival. If so, the patience I praise may be a virtue that is beautiful on paper but expensive on the balance sheet. Second: perhaps I am imposing a foreign standard on Vietnamese football. I was born in Argentina and grew up with a football culture whose youth tradition is very different. But Vietnamese football has its own frame of reference — how it sees a contract, how it sees a player, how it sees an academy. I must remind myself that the right question is not 'why does Vietnam not do it like Argentina', but 'how is Vietnam solving its own problem'. Third: perhaps some of the young players I hoped for are not actually good enough. Youth development is not a talent factory; it is a probability bet. Perhaps I romanticized it. At 59, I am not wiser; I am only less afraid of headlines. So, instead of a conclusion, I leave a question. If V-League gave clubs a financial incentive to use young players — a points system, a bonus, a mechanism — then five years from now, would we still be counting expensive contracts, or would we start counting players given a chance? I write a long article to say something short: football is never what you think it is. And the answer, as always, will be on the pitch, not in the table.