Nhan Xuan Son returns, continues talking about naturalized players

After nearly 2 years of injury, Xuan Son returned to bring new inspiration to the team. And also in the past 2 years, the trend of naturalizing players of teams in the region has become a "hot" topic in public opinion.

Vietnamese Football: Consistent with the chosen path

I still remember many people were sad, even “shocked” when they saw the Vietnam national team (VNT), the reigning Southeast Asian champion, lose 0-4 to the Malaysian team consisting of “all Westerners” in the first leg of the Asian Cup qualifiers. A loss that all experts admitted was “we have no chance”, when the new version of Malaysia is too strong, consisting mostly of high-quality foreign players, playing for clubs in South America and Europe.

Many people are confused: Should we do as they do (naturalize massively to quickly "transform the team"?), or continue on the chosen path - focus on improving the national tournament system, supplementing the team with good overseas Vietnamese players or "mixing in" a few naturalized players?

A ball dispute between players of the two teams Vietnam and Malaysia (Photo: VFF).

In fact, Vietnamese football has made great efforts to improve the quality of the national team by combining many solutions to maintain sustainable development, in which the source of strength must start from the club system itself (with a good youth training system and quality first teams in the national championship or first division). Some overseas Vietnamese players, before being included in the national team, have gone through challenges at clubs in the V.League arena (such as goalkeepers Dang Van Lam and Nguyen Filip).

In the context of Indonesia massively naturalizing or recruiting players of “Indo origin” from all over the world , at the same time Thailand and some other teams also started to follow this trend, of course the Vietnamese team could not ignore good players of “foreign origin”. So Nguyen Xuan Son – aka Rafaelson, a player born and raised in Brazil – appeared like a “fresh breeze”.

Before becoming a Vietnamese player, Xuan Son had spent 5 years living and playing football in the land that he considered his second home. Unfortunately, a serious injury caused Son to be unable to practice and compete for nearly 2 years...

So, when I saw Malaysia completely “transform”, I also thought like many people, that if Xuan Son was there, the Vietnamese team would not have lost to Malaysia, even “if there were 1-2 more naturalized players as good as Son”, it would be unclear which team would win. From another perspective, at that time I also wondered: How could Malaysia suddenly have a whole new team, with so many quality players (was there anything wrong)? Assuming they were naturalized according to the law, would that team really represent the strength of the entire football industry (at that time, Malaysian public opinion was also upset when many quite good domestic players lost the opportunity to contribute to the team, thereby also losing important motivation for young players).

In an article at that time, I shared a similar view of the leader of the Vietnam Football Federation: No matter what, we will not choose to do as they do (massive naturalization) but will still be steadfast in the chosen path, aiming for real values and a sustainable future of football development!

Steady step forward

Five months ago, Malaysian football received a huge shock when the International Football Federation (FIFA) announced evidence that the Malaysian Football Association (FAM) had falsified documents to legalize the naturalization of 7 players who had participated in matches against Vietnam and Nepal in the Asian Cup qualifiers. It turned out that all of them had faked their place of birth in Malaysia (while in fact, according to FIFA's investigation, it was in Brazil, Colombia, Argentina or Spain).

FIFA fined FAM 350,000 Swiss francs, while the seven players were each fined 2,000 Swiss francs and banned from all football activities for 12 months.

While the Malaysian media and fans were commenting back and forth, many of whom expressed shame, Vietnamese fans raised the question: Will the AFC have to impose disciplinary action on Malaysia for losing 0-3 in the matches against Vietnam (instead of winning 4-0) and Nepal, meaning that the Vietnamese team still has a chance to rise to the top of the group to head towards the Asian Cup finals?

Player Xuan Son of Vietnam national team (Photo: Tien Tuan).

Of course, the FAM leadership did not admit it and appealed. The General Secretary of the Asian Football Confederation (AFC, headquartered in Kuala Lumpur, the capital of Malaysia) - a Malaysian (like many other AFC members who also hold Malaysian nationality) - was cautious: "If that is true, there will be appropriate disciplinary action, but we need to wait for confirmation...".

Most recently, the FIFA Appeals Committee has officially rejected FAM's appeal, reaffirming the violations related to the 7 players and maintaining the penalty. Perhaps it is only a matter of time before the AFC officially announces the disciplinary action.

Also in the past time, the Indonesian team – once declared “not caring about the ASEAN Cup” (when witnessing the Vietnamese team under the leadership of coach Kim Sang-sik win the championship) to focus on realizing the “2026 World Cup dream”. Not only having a team of naturalized players, Indonesia also invited a famous name of the past – Patrick Kluivert (Netherlands) – to be the coach to help the team win a ticket to the World Cup.

But in the end, the faith of the “island of thousands” fans collapsed when the Indonesian team, despite progress (with the majority of naturalized players), was still not strong enough to compete for one of the 8 official Asian slots to reach the World Cup finals next year. With his “dream” shattered, Kluivert also resigned.

After the above shock, surely the "strategists" of Indonesian football will have to seriously reconsider their way of doing things, because along with the strength of this country's national team is the stagnation of the domestic national championship system!

Talking to me on the sidelines of the recent ASEAN Sports Ministers Meeting in Hanoi, a representative of the Indonesian Olympic Committee said: “We reluctantly chose to naturalize foreign players en masse, of course in compliance with FIFA regulations, because there are too many negative incidents in the domestic tournament, the quality of domestic players is really weak, while the pressure for results is too high…” Yes, the Indonesian sports and football officials themselves also recognize the inadequacies in their approach, but it takes time to restructure the entire top-level football system.

The lesson of Malaysia, Indonesia, similar to Singapore or the Philippines before (naturalized many foreign players, but the whole football industry declined) is still hot!

In addition to the return of Xuan Son, the Vietnamese football team in this training session also welcomed at least two young rookies (defender Khong Minh Gia Bao and striker Nguyen Tran Viet Cuong), both newly discovered from clubs. Defender Cao Pendant Quang Vinh (Vietnamese-French) or goalkeeper Dang Van Lam (Vietnamese-Russian) also continued to be named. It is a pity that central defender Do Hoang Hen - aka Hendrio, a "Brazilian-born" player who has lived and played in Vietnam for more than 5 years, who once expressed his happiness and pride when he was naturalized as a Vietnamese citizen - has not been called up this time.

Everything is still ahead, and we can celebrate the progress of both the youth teams from U17 to U22 (preparing to participate in SEA Games 33 next month) in recent times, because Vietnamese football is still on the right path.

Author: Journalist Huu Binh is Deputy Director of the Sports Information and Communication Center (Department of Sports, Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism ). He has been in charge of the Content Department of Ho Chi Minh City Sports Newspaper and Sports Magazine for many years; Standing Member of the Vietnam E-Sports and Entertainment Association.

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Source: https://dantri.com.vn/tam-diem/nhan-xuan-son-tro-lai-noi-tiep-chuyen-tuyen-thu-nhap-tich-20251114063112587.htm#comment