The 89th-Minute Falls: The Journey to Find the Applause of Vietnamese Football

I stood at Thong Nhat Stadium on a May afternoon, when the Saigon sunlight began to soften and shadows stretched across the grass. There was no cheering, no spectators – only the sound of the ball rolling and the heavy breathing of Vietnam's U23 players during a closed training session before the tournament. People remember the names of players; I remember the way they fell at the 89th minute. In Vietnamese football, those falls are not just moments of defeat – they are mirrors reflecting the entire character of a generation searching for identity amid the currents of modernization. Vietnamese football has undergone a decade of intense transformation. From the miracle of the 2026 AFC U23 Championship in Changzhou – where young players stunned the entire region – to the painful defeats in the 2026 World Cup qualifiers, where the national team faced giants like Japan, Australia, and Saudi Arabia. But between the glorious pages of history and the scars, there is a larger question awaiting an answer: What are we truly building? An empty stadium, but I still hear my own applause from 2026. That was the season when the V.League had to pause due to the pandemic, and I sat in front of my computer screen in Bangkok, rewatching every match of Vietnamese clubs like a researcher observing tactical flows. In the last three matches of a mid-table V.League club, their PPDA (passes allowed per defensive action) dropped from 12.4 to 9.8 – a clear signal that the gegenpressing philosophy was being applied, but the question is: can it be sustainable when facing the fitness and squad depth of top-tier opponents? Gegenpressing is not about running more; it is the way you refuse safety. In Vietnamese football, this concept was introduced early by foreign coaches, but few truly understand its essence. I remember the match between Hanoi FC and Ho Chi Minh City FC in the 2026 season, where the capital team pressed 14 times in the first 12 minutes, forcing the opponent to lose the ball 9 times in the midfield area. But by the 70th minute, as fitness began to decline, they dropped deep and accepted the pressure. That is not abandoning the philosophy – it is acknowledging that pressing cannot last 90 minutes without elite squad depth. But the more interesting story lies in the smaller clubs. Look at Hai Phong FC – a team that surprised everyone in the 2026 season by finishing second with a budget that was only a fraction of the giants'. Coach Chu Dinh Nghiem built a pressing system based on discipline and mutual understanding, not individual stars. In their match against Viettel FC, the team from the port city executed 23 successful pressing actions in the first half – an impressive number for a team without high-quality foreign players. But what impressed me more was how they accepted defeat. At the 89th minute, with the score at 1-1 and them needing a goal to keep their title hopes alive, a young Hai Phong player attempted to dribble past three opposing defenders instead of passing to a teammate in a better position. He lost the ball, Viettel countered quickly and scored the decisive goal. After the match, that young player cried in the tunnel, not because of the defeat, but because he understood he had chosen flashiness over safety – a lesson that Gegenpressing, in its deepest philosophical sense, is precisely about refusing safety to seek something greater. I have followed Vietnamese football since my early days as a young reporter in Bangkok, where I mispronounced a player's name during a match between Thailand and Vietnam at the 2026 AFF Cup. That was the first time I understood what I was doing – not just transmitting information, but telling stories about people, about limits and aspirations. Over 14 years of observation, I have realized that Vietnamese football does not lack talent, does not lack passion – it lacks a system that can turn moments of genius into sustainable standards. Look at the development of youth academies. The Nutifood JMG Academy, PVF Academy, Hoang Anh Gia Lai Football Academy – these places have produced a generation of players with much better technique than the previous generation. But when I watched Vietnam's U19 team at the 2026 Southeast Asian Championship, I noticed a major problem: these young players have excellent individual technique but lack the ability to read the game and make decisions under pressure. They run a lot, but they run to the wrong places. They press, but they press in a disorganized manner. This is not the players' fault – it is the fault of the training system, where technical drills are prioritized over tactical and situational exercises. I remember a training session of Vietnam's U19 team at the Vietnam Youth Football Training Center in 2026. The coach asked the players to perform a pressing drill simulating a situation where the ball is lost in the midfield area. The drill lasted 15 minutes, and I noticed that most players ran toward the ball instead of running to positions – a fundamental mistake that anyone who has studied the concept of gegenpressing would know. When I asked an assistant coach about this, he replied: 'We focus on improving fitness first; tactics will be taught later.' That is precisely the problem – tactics are not something that can be 'taught later'; they must be built from the foundation, from the simplest exercises. But there is something I learned from my years working in Thailand – a country with a more developed football culture in many aspects – and that is patience. The Thais do not rush in building their teams. They accept failures in the early stages of reconstruction to achieve sustainable success in the later stages. Look at Buriram United – the club that has dominated the Thai League for years – they do not just invest in players; they invest in the training system, in facilities, in data analysis. As a result, they can maintain their level over many seasons, not just one explosive season followed by decline. Vietnamese football stands at an important crossroads. We can choose the easy path – continuing to rely on individual stars, moments of genius, lucky victories. Or we can choose the harder path – building a sustainable system where tactics are taught from the youth level, where data is used for decision-making, where safety is not the ultimate goal. The answer, I believe, lies in how we view those 89th-minute falls. They are not failures – they are lessons. Lessons about refusing safety, about accepting calculated risks, about understanding that true success does not come from isolated victories but from a continuous building process. I stood in Moscow in the summer of 2026 and understood that football has its own grammar. At the World Cup, I witnessed small teams like Iceland and Croatia make history not because they had outstanding stars, but because they had a system, a philosophy, a consistent approach. What can Vietnamese football learn from those teams? The answer lies in the fact that we need to clearly define our identity – what kind of team do we want to become? A high-pressing team with good technique? Or a defensive counter-attacking team with high discipline? There is no right or wrong answer – only an answer that fits our people, culture, and conditions. When I look back at what has happened over the past decade, I notice one thing: Vietnamese football has made tremendous strides in physical and technical aspects. Our players are faster, stronger, more technically skilled than the previous generation. But tactically, we still have a large gap compared to regional opponents. Look at how Thailand handles set pieces, how Malaysia builds their defensive counter-attacking style, how Indonesia utilizes naturalized players – all have their own strengths that we need to learn from. In a recent match at the 2026 AFF Cup, I witnessed a moment that made me reconsider how we view football. The Vietnamese national team was trailing 1-0 against Thailand in the first leg of the final. At the 85th minute, a young substitute came on and immediately made a difference with a bold dribble from the right flank, beating two opposing defenders before being fouled in the box. The referee pointed to the spot, and we equalized. But what impressed me was not that moment – it was how that young player accepted the risk, refused safety, dared to try something no one expected. That is the spirit Vietnamese football needs to develop – not just at the national team level, but at all levels. I believe the future of Vietnamese football lies in our ability to build a comprehensive training system where young players are not only taught technique and fitness but also how to read the game, how to make decisions, how to accept calculated risks. This requires serious investment from clubs, from the Vietnam Football Federation, and from coaches themselves – those who need to change their approach, no longer treating tactics as something to be 'taught later' but as the foundation of all development. The 89th-minute falls will always be a part of football. But the question is: what do we learn from those falls? Do we get up and continue the journey, or do we let those defeats define us? The answer lies within each of us – in how we view football, in how we invest in the future, in how we refuse safety to seek something greater. As I write these lines from Bangkok, I remember an evening at a small café in Hanoi, where I met a retired player who now coaches at a youth academy. He told me: 'I do not teach the kids how to win; I teach them how not to be afraid of losing.' That is the philosophy Vietnamese football needs – not the fear of failure, but the courage to accept risks, to try new things, to build a sustainable future. And I believe that if we can do that, the 89th-minute falls will no longer be painful moments – they will be valuable lessons on the path to becoming a truly strong football nation.