V-League Violence: When the Bad Tackle Is Taught on the Youth Training Pitch

Van Hau's bad challenge on Doan Ngoc Tan in this season's opening weeks earned him a four-match suspension. Not many rounds later, Tan Sinh and then Van Son each took down Dinh Bac — the same young player, the same kind of tackle made without any intention of winning the ball. Three incidents in a short opening stretch of the season.

From the stands, it is easy to attribute this to a moral decline among a few individuals. I sat in the stands and saw something else. I saw a coaching program.

There were years when I did not merely write about the team, but learned to listen to its breathing. In 2026, when Hanoi FC allowed me to follow the squad for ten months, I recorded every training session of Van Quyet, Quang Hai, and Moses. I was present in 37 post-match dressing-room meetings. There I learned something no tactical analysis chart could teach me: players do not collide because they are cruel. They collide because no one taught them how to collide properly.

The dressing room does not lie — every whisper becomes an echo.

An interview with no numbers

A recent interview in Dan tri quoted a figure described as a "European expert", saying the V-League needs to build a football culture from the youth level. This figure argued that too many Vietnamese coaches rely on playing experience rather than proper coaching qualifications. The statement sounds simple, but it touches the root.

What is notable: this expert offered no numbers. No xG. No PPDA. No data on the frequency of dangerous tackles. He spoke only about education. And I think he is right — but not for the reason many people are applauding.

The V-League has long been known for a physical style. Anyone who has followed this league for years knows this. The "physical" label has been passed from generation to generation as part of an identity. But when physicality becomes violence, that label loses its descriptive value and becomes an excuse.

I have watched countless V-League matches with challenges that made the stands hold their breath. What struck me most is that these incidents often come from young players. Not all of them. But enough to form a pattern. And that is when the question shifts: from "which player" to "who taught them".

Technique that is not taught

The expert spoke about slide tackling — the technique of tackling by sliding along the grass. He stressed that this is a skill that can be taught, can be drilled, and in Vietnam it is not taught enough. Alongside duel management, on-field decision-making, and respect for opponents.

This sounds basic. But think carefully.

At a top academy, a 12-year-old has already learned how to approach an opponent without letting him touch the ball with the studs. That boy learns to plant his foot first, lower his centre of gravity, close the angle, and use his body to block the direction. That boy learns how to get up after being tackled, and learns not to tackle back.

At many youth training pitches in Vietnam, a 12-year-old learns something else. He learns that to win, he must make the opponent afraid. He learns that pain is part of the game, and that inflicting pain is a way to survive.

The tackle in the 70th minute is not a technical error — it is the outcome of a choice that was coached very early.

I once mispronounced a person's name, and realised I had unwittingly erased their identity. At the 2026 World Cup, I mispronounced Salem Al-Dawsari's name three times in a single half, and the fan community reacted fiercely. I spent two weeks reviewing my mistake. But afterwards I realised: my mistake was a surface mistake. The mistake of a football nation is a mistake at a deeper level — when an entire generation of players is taught that heavy contact is an identity.

There are three layers of problem stacked on top of each other here. The first layer is individual technique — how to tackle, how to keep balance, how to read distance. The second layer is competitive culture — how a young player understands not backing down, not appearing weak on the pitch. The third layer is the coaching system — who teaches those children, and what they teach with.

The European expert spoke about the third layer. But to reform the third layer, one must first understand the first and second. Otherwise every re-education program will be merely a good-looking workshop that never touches the player's reflexes.

I remember sitting at a youth training pitch on the outskirts of the city. The coach stood outside the line and shouted very loudly: "Tackle him". It was a session for the U13 age group. No one on the coaching staff reacted. I sat there, taking no notes, and thought I had just watched the starting point of a challenge that would be on television eight years later.

The early-season storm and the excuse of the pitch

Before going deep into the solution, I want to pause on a detail many overlook: the timing of the incidents.

All three — Van Hau, Tan Sinh, Van Son — fell in the early part of the season. This is no coincidence. The European expert is right that the start of a season is when players compete for places. The pressure to break into the starting XI pushes some players to play too aggressively as a way of proving themselves.

The pitch is also a variable. Heavy rain, poor grass, a slippery ball — those conditions make challenges harder to control. But this is where I want to speak plainly: a poor pitch is an aggravating factor, not the root cause. If tomorrow the V-League had pitches as good as the Premier League's, violence would decrease — but it would not disappear. Because the bad tackle is not in the grass. It is in the player's head.

If you believe a poor pitch is the cause, you are reassuring yourself with a solution that does not exist. If you believe it is the root cause, you will never reach the training ground of 12-year-olds.

I have followed Hanoi FC through rainy seasons. I saw players slip, collide, get up. I also saw other players — same pitch conditions, same rain — choose a different way to play. What distinguished them was not in the studs. It was in what someone had or had not taught them.

There was a time I asked a veteran player why he did not retaliate after being tackled. He smiled and said: "Because I fear sitting out six matches more than I fear the opponent scoring". That was a governance answer, not a moral one. A player does the right thing when the cost of doing wrong is large enough and clear enough. When the cost is vague, they revert to the instinct they were coached into as children.

Walls that keep secrets and what they pass down

A player does not grow up thanks to tactics, but thanks to dressing-room walls that know how to keep secrets.

I learned this in my first season at Hanoi FC. When you are in a dressing room long enough, you notice a rule: young players watch senior players. Not with admiration. With survival instinct. They learn how to eat, how to sleep, how to answer interviews, how to tackle.

When a senior player commits a cynical foul, a young player does not think "that is bad behaviour". They think "that is how you survive here".

The European expert calls this the role-model cascade — behaviour at the professional level flows downward to the amateur and youth levels. This is a hugely important insight that few discuss. Because it reverses responsibility: discipline in the V-League is not only the V-League's business. It is an intervention in youth education.

In other words, when the VFF suspended Van Hau for four matches, they were not merely punishing one player. They were sending a signal to thousands of children training across Vietnam. The signal said: this is the limit. This is what you do not do.

The problem is that this signal only has value if it is consistent. If the ban is heavy for Van Hau's tackle but light for a similar tackle in another round, the signal becomes noise. And noise teaches no one.

In the dressing room, I once heard a young player say to a senior: "You tackled like that and got nothing?". That is not a question about the rules. It is a question about culture. And the answer is written in the sanctions, in how the coaching staff react, in whom the press names.

The licensing gap and the human-capital bottleneck

Now to the hardest part.

The European expert said too many Vietnamese coaches rely on playing experience rather than coaching qualifications. I do not have official data on the share of youth coaches in Vietnam holding AFC licences at which level. But I have my own observations.

On trips following youth teams in the provinces, I met many youth coaches. Not all of them. But enough to see a pattern: they teach by demonstration. They demonstrate the way they were once taught. They have no lesson plans, no documents, no theoretical system behind them.

This creates a loop. The teacher teaches by reflex. The student learns by copying. When the student grows up and becomes a coach, he teaches by reflex again. The loop does not break itself.

A coaching licence is not a certificate to hang on the wall. It is a commitment that the person teaching children has learned how to teach.

If I had to point to a single bottleneck in the V-League violence problem, I would point here. Not at the sanctions. Not at the pitch. Not at the fine amounts.

And this is also why I do not expect quick results. Licensing reform takes years. Re-educating a generation of youth coaches takes longer. Meanwhile the press and public demand change immediately after every round of matches.

Public pressure for immediate results and the real reform timeline of many years lie on two lines that are not parallel. That is a gap no one wants to name.

But waiting does not mean doing nothing. It means acting at the right layer, at the right time, with the right expectations. If the VFF announced a roadmap requiring mandatory licences for youth coaches from a specific season, I would treat that as the most positive signal in years. Because it touches the deepest layer of the problem.

Are the penalties deterring?

The European expert asked a question few dare to ask: if dangerous challenges keep occurring after sanctions, then the sanctions themselves are failing.

This is a very practical evaluation criterion. Not "are the penalties severe" but "do the penalties change behaviour". Not the severity of the punishment, but the recurrence rate.

And looking at the number of incidents in a short opening stretch of the season, the answer is not optimistic.

The expert added something important: the purpose of punishment must be both to punish and to prevent. That is the language of an administrator, not a pundit. He did not only demand heavier bans. He demanded more consistent bans.

Consistency in discipline is not an administrative detail. It is the content of the signal sent to the entire system.

A heavy but inconsistent ban creates confusion. It makes players think they were punished for their reputation, for public pressure, not for their behaviour. A light but consistent ban builds culture, because everyone knows where the limit lies.

And this is where the VFF and the VPF need to look squarely. Responsibility is currently shared between two organisations. In governance, shared responsibility often means responsibility belongs to no one in particular. When two organisations share responsibility for a problem, a clear coordination mechanism is needed. Without it, reform stands still at the intersection.

I have witnessed post-match press conferences where questions about violence were answered with a generic line: "We will look into it". Looking into it is an administrative act. It is not a disciplinary act. And young players at training pitches can hear the difference.

What no one wants to say about the name in the newspaper

This is where I want to talk about something a European-based expert may not see, and a Vietnam-based reporter sees far more clearly.

The V-League violence issue has a psychological driver rarely mentioned: the need to find someone to blame. When the public is angry, they need a name. When the press covers it, they need a character.

Van Hau, Tan Sinh, Van Son became those names. That is understandable from a news perspective. But from a human perspective, it is dangerous.

I say this as a person who once mispronounced a player's name and was condemned by the community. I understand what it feels like to be under pressure from a name said wrong. For a player cited as a symbol of violence, that pressure is many times greater.

When a young player is tackled in a match, he needs protection. But when a player who commits the tackle is named everywhere, he too needs to be treated as a human being — not as a symbol for an angry public to throw itself at.

This does not mean excusing dangerous behaviour. Sanctions must still exist. Reform must still happen. But how a community treats the individuals in the story will determine whether they can change or whether they will close up.

There is a truth I have never written down: inside the dressing room, players talk to each other very differently from how they talk to the press. When attacked on all sides, they do not fix themselves. They shut down. And when a generation of players shuts down to all criticism, reform cannot get in.

I remember a line I always remind myself of: I keep the rhythm for the team, but they are the ones who taught me that the heartbeat never stops. That heartbeat, for the players, is still going. They are still human, even though they just collided on the pitch.

Where the bottleneck sits in the bigger picture

I want to widen the lens a little before closing.

The European expert mentioned something I think is the most important point in the whole interview: if tackles are treated as normal in football, they will spread down to youth level, amateur level, and even school football. Violence on V-League pitches does not stop at the V-League. It flows through pipelines we do not see: amateur matches, youth tournaments, weekend sessions in the park.

This makes the problem bigger than a season. It is a problem of an entire ecosystem.

And this also makes the story a little more interesting. If V-League violence is a structural problem of the ecosystem, it can also be the starting point of a larger transformation. A football nation that teaches young players how to collide properly is a football nation that produces players unafraid of contact.

A V-League that values consistency in discipline is a V-League that can attract international investors sensitive to reputational risk. A football nation with a proper coaching-licence system is a football nation that can export players to Japan, Korea, and Europe with a higher success rate.

The cost of not fixing this is not only injuries. It is the development ceiling of an entire football nation.

But I do not want to paint too bright a picture. Because that vision only materialises if the parties involved understand the problem correctly. If they misunderstand, if they keep treating symptoms instead of causes, if they wait for public pressure to subside and then forget, everything will repeat. And I, who have followed teams for years, will sit in the stands again and record new bad tackles.

There are two ways to see the future. The first is pessimistic: everything repeats, and the V-League keeps the violent label. The second is open: the problem has been named, the parties have been identified, and a reform platform already exists — coaching licences and youth education. I choose the second, not out of optimism, but because it is the only way this work can move forward.

Signals to track

An empty stadium, yet not empty at all — hearts are still beating to the same rhythm.

I am not the one delivering conclusions on this. I am the one recording it. But if you ask what I will track in the months ahead, I will answer this way.

First, the recurrence rate. Not the number of sanctions. But the number of similar incidents occurring after each VFF ruling. If the V-League hands down another heavy ban and a week later there is another similar challenge, then we know the disciplinary system is not working.

Second, consistency in sanctions. When the same type of behaviour receives different ban lengths in different rounds, the system's credibility falls. I will track this by comparing sanctions for the same type of challenge.

Third, concrete steps on coaching licences. If the VFF or VPF publishes a roadmap requiring mandatory licences for youth coaches, that will be the most important signal — and also the hardest to obtain. Licensing reform requires resources, time, and consensus among many parties.

Fourth, how the community treats the players named. If the community shifts from judging individuals to demanding systemic change, that will be a sign of maturity for the entire Vietnamese football ecosystem.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly: whether any young player speaks publicly about what he was taught at the youth training pitch. When a player dares to say "I was once taught to make opponents afraid", that will be the moment the problem is truly opened. Because then the story is no longer the story of names in the papers. It becomes the story of a generation.

And when a generation speaks up, everything can change.