“Sacrifice” V.League for the national team

According to the explanation of VFF and VPF, the break time will be fully utilized by the teams with the aim of having a fresher and sharper appearance when the national professional football tournament system returns in early 2026. In particular, the two teams Hoang Anh Gia Lai and Hanoi Police will continue to practice to enter the make-up match of round 4 held on December 18.

This is not a sudden change, the Organizing Committee has prepared as many reasonable options as possible when building the competition plan for the 2025/26 season. At that time, there were 2 options proposed: V-League will rest for 58 days or 84 days.

The suspension of the tournament has caused a lot of debate for a long time between the clubs and VFF, VPF. However, this issue is not easy to handle harmoniously, satisfying everyone when on one side is the national mission, on the other side are the interests of professional football teams, budgets from bosses and sponsors.

Coach Harry Kewell of Hanoi FC shared that he was quite surprised when he received the news that V.League would be on break for nearly 3 months, but as someone who has just come to work in Vietnam, he had to consider it normal and find a solution for the club during the long winter break.

The fact that the V.League break is too long for the national team to play an away match against Laos on November 19, and the U22 team to compete in the 33rd SEA Games is considered an unusual way of arranging the schedule of the VPF. Fans believe that the VFF still has the pressure of achieving results at the SEA Games, so they focus on this.

The national team will have no tasks for the remaining time and many players will be "sitting around doing nothing" waiting until January 30, 2026 to play V.League.

About 20 young players under 22 years old were selected to compete in the SEA Games, but having to rest from a professional tournament for about 3 months is still a waste of time for human resources and material for the club. It creates inertia for the players and makes Vietnamese football still deviate from the professional path. Experts say that such a break is unreasonable, because the 33rd SEA Games is only for young players, so there is no need to rest from a professional tournament. A break that is too long will cause clubs that are in good form to stagnate, but for clubs that are not in good form, there will be time to rebuild their playing style when the tournament returns.

In fact, in major tournaments around the world, no country has a long break like Vietnam to give time for young players to compete in the SEA Games. Countries in Southeast Asia do not do that either, but we still do it the old way, even though the V.League has been formed for 25 years.

Source: https://baophapluat.vn/hy-sinh-v-league-vi-doi-tuyen-quoc-gia.html