A strong movement makes it easy to find "stars".

The 2025 Women's National Football Cup concluded on April 6th in Hanoi. The championship title went to Ho Chi Minh City Women's Football Club after they defeated Thai Nguyen T&T in the final.

Hanoi Women's Club played 2 matches (1 loss, 1 draw) in this tournament, finishing last in Group B and being eliminated in the group stage - a dismal performance that shows the decline of women's football in the capital city.

To halt this decline, many things need to be done, the most obvious being the need to improve the quality of the squad through youth training and acquiring talented players from elsewhere. Regarding coaching and youth development, the top priority is securing a plentiful pool of talent, from which to discover and persuade promising young players to pursue a career in football. The question is, where to find them?

Modern social life is very different from the past. Children study all day, leaving little time for play, let alone sports training in a context where playing fields are so limited; if this is the case for boys, girls face even more psychological barriers as many people believe that football is not a good choice for women... Therefore, the pool of talent is extremely limited. Don't think that diligently traveling here and there as before will be enough to find the right people for a strong women's football team.

Vietnamese football has the potential to learn from Japan and other countries with advanced sports systems, but perhaps we've only been learning about high-level sports – the superficial aspects – and haven't yet learned how they nurture the fundamentals. Grassroots sports, especially school sports, are the most important element in establishing those roots. From comprehensively nurtured school sports, the US and Japan have produced world champions in many sports, and have very strong women's soccer teams...

Currently, expanding the pool of athletes in general and football players in particular requires a change in approach, shifting from passively waiting for talent to actively creating a talent pool. Utilizing teachers and sports collaborators at the grassroots level in schools to identify young talents is a correct approach, but it is insufficient. The major task is to invest in infrastructure to support the development of school sports, and to regularly organize well-structured sports competitions for students. This is something that the sports sector alone, or a single sports federation, club, team, commune, or province, cannot accomplish.

Source: https://hanoimoi.vn/phong-trao-manh-de-tim-sao-698686.html