Officially starting on March 22 in Hanoi , round 1 of the 2025 National Volleyball Championship is a fierce competition for rankings between top names, with a strong "transformation": For the first time, there are a dream number of teams with 8 men's teams and 8 women's teams.
Change from the foundation
The number of 16 teams is completely suitable for a volleyball scene that is gradually professionalizing, accordingly, each season will stabilize 1 men's team, 1 women's team will be relegated as well as there will be 2 teams that are entitled to play in this arena from the national A-class league. Even the experiment of playing a round-robin in the group stage will end this year, aiming to play two home and away matches according to the League format of football, selecting the 4 teams with the best results to the semi-finals, from the 2026 season.
Two Polish foreign players are expected to make an impression at the tournament: Michal Kubiak (CATP HCM) and Natalia Lijewska (VTV Binh Dien Long An ). Photo: FIVB
The 2025 National Volleyball Championship season will also be a pivotal time for considering increasing the number of foreign players. Currently, each club is allowed to register a maximum of 2 foreign players, but only one foreign player can be used on the field at any time. According to the plan of the Vietnam Volleyball Federation, from next season, the regulation of hiring 3 foreign players can be applied and the number of non-Vietnamese players on the field will be recalculated specifically.
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The year's tournament has a new sponsor (Ca Mau Fertilizer), with a total prize value of approximately 2.3 billion VND. The champion team will receive 500 million VND in prize money while the remaining 3 teams in the top 4 will receive 300 million VND; 200 million VND and 100 million VND respectively.
Income is not equal to expenditure
Half a billion dong for the championship is a pretty big prize, but it is certainly not the biggest motivation for teams to compete. In addition to the actual cost of maintaining the team's activities each year, which is up to several billion dong, now every team has to worry about hiring foreign players because without this source of reinforcement, the possibility of relegation can happen.
No team has publicly disclosed the cost of recruiting foreign players, although the estimated figure 2-3 years ago reached the mark of 20,000 - 40,000 USD. Even world-class star from Azerbaijan Polina Rahimova was once said to have joined Geleximco Thai Binh for 47,000 USD, or more than 1 billion VND in 2022!
This is the fee to hire a foreign player to compete in just one period (the previous Vietnamese volleyball season had two periods of going and returning), which is only about a month. Any team that is willing to hire two athletes like The Cong Tan Cang, CATP HCM (men) or Hoa Chat Duc Giang (women), this huge amount of money... will automatically double.
Among the 18 foreign players registered, the most famous is Michal Kubiak. The 38-year-old Polish striker has just joined the HCM City Police Department. He was the captain of the Polish volleyball team that won the 2012 World League and twice won the FIVB World Championship in 2014 and 2018. He is also in the top 100 best male athletes in the world according to the Volleybox website.
On the women's side is Sharon Chepchumba, an athlete who is playing for Duc Giang Chemicals for the second consecutive season. The Kenyan hitter was awarded the title of "Best Attacker of the Season" in 2024. Duc Giang Chemicals invited her to compete again to realize the championship dream of "Mr. Huyen's" team.
In the trend of successfully recruiting superstars playing in Europe, the presence of Edina Begic (Bosnia & Herzegovina) in the Geleximco Thai Binh women's team, Miroslava Paskova (Bulgaria) in the LPBank Ninh Binh team or Natalia Lijewska (Poland) in the VTV Binh Dien Long An shirt really gives fans more faith and hope.
Preparing to establish Truong Tuoi Women's Volleyball Club - Binh Phuoc
The high cost of hiring foreign players is indisputable, because competing in a mid-level volleyball league like Vietnam has many risks for good athletes, from nutrition, recovery care to training and competition facilities that are completely different from Europe. On the other hand, the teams are carefully advised, even sending experts to "go to the front lines" to check the quality of foreign players, ensuring that they have reinforcements that are worth every penny.
Impressive numbers
Just looking at the statistics clearly stated in the "huge" resume of Alejandro Rodriguez Fuentes (The Cong Tan Cang), fans will feel even more excited. Fuentes is one of two Cuban foreign players of the army team, possessing a height of 2.1 m (the tallest in the tournament), a blocking range of 3.55 m and a jump range of up to 3.78 m, all of which are unprecedented milestones in Vietnamese volleyball!
Source: https://nld.com.vn/bong-chuyen-viet-thue-ngoai-binh-khung-196250322195943824.htm
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