Are 'speechless' transfers holding back Vietnamese football?

"I don't know how to answer," Dang Van Lam hesitated, smiling in response to the question about joining a First Division team. His new teammate Nguyen Quoc Viet reacted similarly. Even those involved didn't know what to say.

It is easy to understand the answers of Van Lam and Quoc Viet. There is no common logic to explain why a national player signed a billion-dollar contract with a lower-ranked team and then joined a rival team less than a month later. The brightest young talent - who had just been called up to the national team - was playing regularly in the V.League for the team at the top of the rankings but was suddenly transferred to a lower-ranked team.

Even Dang Van Lam himself could not give an answer about his strange transfer.

Of course, every story has a reason, but it seems that Van Lam and Quoc Viet understand that if an answer is given, it will only make things more complicated. No matter how you explain it, it will be difficult to make it reasonable, because the nature of the story is inherently twisted. Perhaps they themselves accept that it happened that way because it... had to happen that way.

From another perspective, Van Lam and Quoc Viet’s inability to answer the difficult question may also be because the cause of the problem does not lie with them. Both players - as well as others who have just transferred from Ho Chi Minh City Youth Club to Phu Dong Ninh Binh - are just objects pushed by the times, a result of the strange state that is happening in Vietnamese football.

Unlike his two teammates, midfielder Nguyen Hoang Duc had a more straightforward answer. He left V.League to go down to the lower division because of money, a reason that no one can argue about. The amount of money Hoang Duc received at Phu Dong Ninh Binh is a figure that no team in V.League can meet.

There will be fans who sympathize with this player's financial situation. After all, 21 billion is still bigger than 15 billion. Others - especially those who love Hoang Duc's playing style - will not be happy to see a star player playing in a low-level environment.

Controversy is normal. What creates the abnormality is not Hoang Duc - or Van Lam, Quoc Viet - but the way an incomplete football system operates.

In the top football environment, players also play for money. Factors of development and ambition only have meaning when there is not a huge amount of money, dozens of times the "market price" on the negotiating table.

What stops Arab owners from pouring money into the lower leagues of English football to sign top stars is the rules of the game. A complex system of rules – with catchy names like the “Sustainable Development and Profits Act” – directly governs the spending decisions of owners and clubs.

Up to now, the rules of English football have been constantly adjusted and the catalyst for this process is the problems arising from the abnormality. The ripples - such as the stars leaving V.League to the First Division - pose the problem of adjusting the football, maybe to limit the abnormality, or turn it into normal.

The response of managers and stakeholders will determine the next direction of football development.

Xiao Ming

Source: https://vtcnews.vn/nhung-vu-chuyen-nhuong-can-loi-keo-lui-bong-da-viet-nam-ar901928.html