A big turning point for Vietnamese youth football

The model of organizing youth football tournaments in the form of football seasons has always been the dream of experts and football fans in Vietnam. However, due to financial and organizational issues, the idea only existed on paper and social networks for a long time. Until the U14 tournament for clubs in the Northern region appeared...

Young players also need to play regularly.

When he was still the head coach of the Vietnam national team, Mr. Philippe Troussier mentioned an important factor if the "Golden Star Warriors" wanted to attend the World Cup. The French coach, who has worked with many developing football teams similar to Vietnam, shared his opinion: "I hope that young players can play about 40 to 50 matches in each season. And the V.League season can last continuously for about 10 months. This is not an uncommon story in Europe or leading Asian countries. But in Vietnam, the number of matches for young players is very limited."

12 and 13 year old players are competing in a season-based tournament for the first time in Vietnam.

Mauro Jeronimo, who used a squad with 4/5 players under 22 years old for PVF-CAND in the First Division, expressed: "Young Vietnamese players are only allowed to participate in national tournaments in each corresponding age group. This number only fluctuates up to 20 matches. Not to mention, each tournament only lasts about 1-2 months. For the rest, young players have to practice alone, leading to a lack of real-life experience and missing the opportunity to hone their skills at a stage when they should be developing their abilities."

Concerned about the fact that young Vietnamese players have few top-level playing fields, Mr. Cristiano Roland - the coach who helped U17 Hanoi win the National U17 Championship twice in a row and accompanied U17 Vietnam at the Asian tournament last year emphasized: "Vietnam's football team has tried to bring youth tournaments. But in reality, even for a team that reached the final like U17 Hanoi at the National U17 Finals, the fact that the players have 16 matches to play is a lucky thing. What about the teams that do not qualify? They only have 8 matches per year. That number is too small for the players to get used to the pressure of competition."

It is not difficult to recognize the problems of young Vietnamese players. The Vietnam Football Federation also realizes that, if they do not play regularly, young players will not be able to adapt well to the rhythm of preparing for a match, may be surprised by the pressure, not used to singing the National Anthem or having fans come to the stadium to watch. The more the player is used to pressure, the easier it is to remove the psychological barrier.

The plan to organize tournaments in a season format, similar to many countries in the world , is something that the Vietnam Football Federation, experts and fans all desire to become a reality. However, due to the modest financial problem, the clubs are not really serious about training and developing young players on a large scale, organizing a tournament according to the season as desired only stopped at theory for a long time.

The first rung

Therefore, the appearance of the U14 tournament of Northern Clubs received attention and high appreciation from fans and experts. It is known that in the first season, the U14 teams of the Clubs, Professional Youth Football Training Centers in the Northern region include: Hanoi, The Cong Viettel, Hanoi Police, PVF Youth Football Training Center, Nam Dinh , Hai Phong, Hoai Duc, Thanh Hoa, Song Lam Nghe An.

Up to now, the tournament has reached the second round. Each round takes place at 2:00 pm every Saturday, lasting from October 2025 to January 2026. The teams all compete in a round-robin to calculate points, selecting 3 champions, runners-up and third place teams, similar to V.League or First Division. More importantly, each youth team is allowed to play a total of 14 matches. Thanks to that, a series of 11-13 year old players will have many opportunities to play football regularly every week.

For fans, this model needs to be replicated at the U15, U17, U19 and U21 levels. Instead of being organized as a cup tournament with qualifying rounds and final rounds as at present, youth tournaments being run in the form of a football season, with a period of 4-5 months, will bring many opportunities for "rising stars" to mature. That is also the basis for head coaches or football teams not to rush to miss out on talent.

Witnessing the promising steps of Vietnamese youth football, Mr. Yusuke Adachi - Technical Director of Hanoi Club emphasized: "I myself, since I was the Technical Director of VFF, have always wanted to organize tournaments in the league format (round robin). After 5 years of waiting, thanks to the great support from T&T Group along with the consensus and understanding from football academies, we have finally realized the Northern U14 tournament.

However, this is just the beginning of the implementation of a year-round tournament system for all youth age groups. If Vietnamese football really wants to rise to the top group in Asia, this is the only way."

He continued: "I hope that this U14 tournament will soon be expanded to the Central and Southern regions, and then other age groups will also be added to make the system more complete and comprehensive.

The league format is not just about increasing the number of games, but also about creating an important development environment where players and coaches can grow through the cycle of 'match - training - match' repeated every week. This is something that a knockout format simply cannot provide, especially in terms of developing the individual abilities of players throughout the year."

More selection grounds for Vietnam U16 team

U16 Vietnam is the first national level in the international career of the player. As usual, the team will look for faces through the National U15 tournament. However, with the appearance of the U14 tournament in the Northern region, the coaching staff of U16 Vietnam will have an additional tournament to discover potential factors. From there, the "Young Warriors of the Golden Star" will have more options or closely follow the development process of the potential faces.

Competing continuously for 14 rounds will help 12 and 13 year old players hone their skills and develop their potential. Based on this, U16 Vietnam will be able to select promising players to participate in U16 Southeast Asia and U17 Asia qualifiers.

Source: https://cand.com.vn/the-thao/buoc-ngoat-lon-cho-bong-da-tre-viet-nam-i785155/