European Expert: 'V-League Must Train Football Culture from Youth Level'

In the same early-season window, I recorded three incidents carrying the same "signature" across V-League pitches: two different defenders deliberately took down Dinh Bac - a young forward in the middle of establishing his place. Not ball challenges. Not mistimed tackles. Calculated fouls aimed at a specific target, as if a message had been pre-arranged. Around the same time, Van Hau received a four-match ban for a dangerous challenge on Doan Ngoc Tan. Four matches - a number substantial enough to register, but not large enough to create change.

Violence on V-League pitches is not a new problem. Anyone who has followed this league for years recognizes a recurring pattern: two-footed lunges, tactical fouls that turn into demolition challenges, heated arguments with referees. But what concerns me more than the existence of violence is how we explain it. When one player plays dirty, we assign it to his character. When many players play dirty in the same window, we must look at the system that produced them.

This analysis is written from the perspective of a sports researcher who has followed the V-League across multiple seasons and recognizes that the problem does not stem from the personality of individual players, but from a football-culture foundation that has been left empty.

The interview with the European expert: Finally, the right question

Dan Tri has just published an interview with a European football expert - who has repeatedly shared views with the newspaper - about the increasingly visible violence phenomenon in the V-League. The core message is systemic: the V-League cannot solve violence merely with punishments; it must train football culture from youth level. This is a completely different framing from familiar domestic debates, which usually revolve around heavier penalties or emphasizing player discipline.

According to the expert, if dangerous incidents continue to recur despite disciplinary measures, one must question the deterrent effectiveness of current punishments. That statement, read carefully, is not just a warning but a verdict on the failure of the current disciplinary system. I do not predict the future. I just read data faster than most people. And the data from this season's opening shows something very clearly: punishments are being enforced, but behavior is not changing.

Three notable incidents were recorded in a short early-season window. Van Hau suspended for four matches. Tan Sinh and Van Son deliberately fouled Dinh Bac. Three incidents, three different players, but a common denominator: the tacit acceptance of calculated fouls. The question is not why they did it - because of result pressure, competition for starting spots, "damage" tactics taught from an early age - but why we remain surprised.

Tactical perspective: Violence as a product of training deficit

Unlike conventional analyses that separate violence from tactics, I view dangerous tackles as a technical product - a defective one. The technique of tackling with the outside of the boot, the technique of shielding in duels, the technique of pivoting under pressure - all are teachable skills. And when a player commits a dangerous foul by lunging like a falling board, I do not see a bad person; I see a missed practice session in his development.

This approach explains why the European expert stressed the role of youth coaches in his Dan Tri interview. He argued that too many coaches rely mainly on playing experience or even street-football experience, rather than formal training under licensing standards. This means technique - including how to tackle, how to compete, how to control emotions - is passed down by "father-to-son" osmosis, without any standardized process.

I remember watching a youth-team session at a training center in northern Vietnam. Their coach - a former professional with a long playing career - instructed his students how to stop opponents with a full-body slide. The session had no situational reading, no precise timing identification, no risk minimization when sliding. He taught the slide. When to slide - "you learn by playing." I am not saying that coach was bad. But his method was the product of a system where playing experience is considered credential enough to transfer knowledge.

This is the blind spot of Vietnamese football. In leading European leagues, a youth coach must go through the UEFA licensing pyramid - C, B, A, Pro - each requiring hundreds of hours of study, practice, and periodic assessment. Even the lowest youth coaching license requires understanding pedagogical methods, session design, and technical error analysis. In the environment the expert describes, becoming a coach based on playing background is far too common. Prejudice is just noisy data the market has not learned to process. And the prejudice here is: if you played well, you can teach well.

From technique to culture: Norm transmission from the top

There is a sports-psychology principle rarely mentioned when discussing violence: humans learn social behavior through observation and imitation. Young players - whether from club academies or grassroots leagues - look up to senior professionals as role models. If a young player sees that "roughing up" opponents is accepted at the professional level, he treats it as standard. If he sees that tactical fouls go unpunished, he treats them as part of the game.

This transmission does not stop at the professional level. It seeps into every layer of the football system - from academies to schools, from grassroots leagues to local pitches. A training environment that encourages young players to play aggressively, to intimidate opponents, rather than focusing on technique and tactics, is contributing to a generation of players with violence hardcoded. Habits formed early harden with repetition; by the time a player reaches the V-League, they have become inseparable from his playing style.

The European expert referenced Van Hau's case as an example. Four matches for a dangerous challenge shows the disciplinary body worked. But the deeper question is: was Van Hau - a player trained in a professional environment - ever taught about exact tackle timing, about decision-making in the eighty-millisecond window, about body moderation when committing to a tackle? I have watched many V-League matches and logged dangerous tackles. Most show signs of technical training failure, not deliberate intent to injure. But when technical errors recur, society begins to read them as conspiracy. At that point, the gap between a half-second-late slide and a deliberate demolition is razor-thin.

Result pressure and environmental consequences

Violence cannot be separated from result pressure. The V-League is a competition where the professional gap between teams is narrow, where one win can shift the entire landscape. In this context, coaches tend to use tactical fouls as a way to stop opponents' attacking rhythm. But the line between tactical foul and violent foul is fragile, and under pressure it is often erased.

In a previous analysis of Southeast Asian leagues, I split data into fifteen-minute segments and found an interesting pattern: dangerous fouls cluster at specific phases of matches - early on, when teams are probing; after conceding, when chasing the game; and late in matches, when fatigue causes half-beat-late tackles. The early season is also a sensitive window: players compete for starting places, coaches experiment with lineups, and positional anxiety makes people choose force over intelligence.

The environment matters. Heavy rain makes pitches slippery, poor soil makes legs heavy, ball trajectories become unpredictable. Under such conditions, tackles become harder to control, and a few centimeters of error can turn a normal challenge into an injury risk. We cannot blame the environment entirely, but we cannot deny that it creates conditions conducive to dangerous behavior. The V-League must see pitch quality not merely as infrastructure but as a direct factor in player safety and disciplinary outcomes.

The penalty trap: When discipline misses its deterrence target

The European expert spent much of the interview questioning the effectiveness of disciplinary measures. He said that if dangerous incidents keep recurring, we must question the efficacy of current penalties. This brings us to what I call the "punishment paradox": when penalties are not strong enough to change behavior, increasing them becomes a positive message for the public while changing nothing on the pitch.

What does the early-season data show? Disciplinary actions have been issued. Violent players have been suspended. But dangerous fouls keep recurring at undiminished frequency. If we treat discipline as a deterrent instrument - a signal to the player market that violent behavior will be proportionally punished - then clearly the signal is distorted or too weak. Why? Because the system treats symptoms, not causes.

In European football, the deterrent value of sports discipline is measured by a simple metric: the recidivism rate. An effective disciplinary system is one where previously punished players do not repeat. The V-League, based on repeated incidents across multiple seasons, appears to be applying a "punish for punishment's sake" model rather than "punish to prevent." The expert stressed that penalties serve both punishment and prevention. When prevention fails, we do not just have a discipline problem; we have a systemic problem.

The weight on VFF and VPF: Shared responsibility

One interesting detail is the expert's assignment of responsibility to both VFF and VPF. This is not just a generic call - it is a commentary on governance structure. When one body handles discipline and another runs the league, questions of authority, accountability, and coordination become critical. If VFF issues sanctions but VPF has no monitoring mechanism, the sanction is void. If VPF wants tougher action but VFF does not support the legal framework, efforts are just declarations.

I once watched a similar case in another regional league, where the national federation and the league operating company had conflicting interests. Result: delayed sanctions, prolonged investigations, and violence left unpunished. Every statistic is a testimony. My job is to make them honest. The number here, though not officially stated in the interview, can be inferred from the governance structure: responsibility lies in coordination - and that coordination appears to be failing.

He called for "stricter" and more "consistent" penalties. The word "consistent" matters because it implies the current system lacks consistency - similar violations may receive different penalties depending on context, club, or timing. This inconsistency creates an uncertain environment where players do not know the real boundary, and where punished players can argue unfair treatment.

A contrarian reading: The execution blind spot

Let me offer a counterintuitive angle rarely discussed: is the "football culture" story being exploited by players, coaches, and fans as a shield for negative defensive tactics? The image of a losing team playing dirty, hiding their disadvantage behind violence, then invoking "culture" as justification - this has appeared too many times.

Conversely, some players have become adept at turning ordinary contact into simulation opportunities or referee pressure, making "violence" ambiguous. I have seen tackles with zero intent to foul branded as violent. This ambiguity erodes fan trust and paralyzes the disciplinary system with trivial appeals.

Referees are under enormous strain. On poorly controlled pitches, with high-speed play, they must make split-second decisions without the VAR support of leading leagues. This creates gray zones players exploit - between ordinary and violent fouls, between intentional and accidental, where punishment becomes a lottery based on one person's limited view.

The Dinh Bac case also deserves attention. Two different players deliberately targeting the same young forward within a short window suggests organized intimidation - not merely deficient technique. This distinction matters: education alone will not solve deliberate targeting. It requires enforcement, protection, and a clear signal that targeting specific opponents is unacceptable.

Youth coaches: Sowing the culture of conduct

Any true reform of football culture must begin with the youth coaching class. The European expert's emphasis is clear: Vietnam needs well-trained, licensed coaches who continually update their knowledge. This is a call to both VFF and VPF, because youth coach quality is the quality of an entire future generation of players.

In developed football nations, becoming a youth coach is not a fallback for a playing career but a respected profession. In Spain, Guardiola and Luis Enrique began in youth roles at Barcelona before stepping up. In Germany, youth coaches undergo rigorous training in pedagogy, psychology, and tactical analysis. They are not allowed to teach players to "play by instinct" - they are taught how to analyze matches, read situations, process emotions under pressure.

What do we see in Vietnam? A youth coaching workforce trained unevenly - where people become coaches mainly because they were professionals, where licensing courses are more symbolic than substantive, and where updating new knowledge about coaching methodology, sports science, and sports psychology is nearly impossible. "I played for years, I understand this game better than anyone" - that is the most common phrase I hear from youth coaches, and it is also the most dangerous prejudice. Bad habits are transmitted like correct techniques, and across generations, the gap between our coaching methods and those of developed football nations widens.

The resource question: Invest in coaches or in punishments?

One aspect not stated directly, but inferable from the expert's arguments: the resource question. When VFF and VPF decide how much to spend on coach education, licensing courses, and bringing in foreign experts versus processing disciplinary cases, their priorities become visible. If the coaching budget is modest while disciplinary processing costs billions of dong per season - in time, effort, and reputation - the equation is upside down.

Opportunity cost is a familiar economics concept rarely applied in football governance. The cost of under-investing in coach education is invisible in the short term, but manifests through injuries from poor technique, suspensions reducing squad availability, and league reputational damage. What do sponsors see in the V-League? They see a competition with excessive controversy, dangerous challenges, and disciplinary scandals. They see brand risk. When they withdraw, league revenue falls, clubs struggle, result pressure intensifies, and coaches resort to impatient solutions - a vicious cycle.

What happens if we do not change?

This question is necessary, even if no one wants to answer it. If the V-League continues on its current path, the three-to-five-year scenario is clear: deterioration in young player quality. Players trained in unstructured environments cannot compete internationally. Skills like situational reading, positional awareness, and processing under pressure - formed through systematic development - will be fatal weaknesses against opponents from superior systems.

We will also see international reputational damage. When a league is mentioned not for its technical quality but for its violent incidents, when foreign players face dangerous challenges, when a footage of a player being taken out spreads globally - the league's credibility erodes silently but steadily.

What is more alarming than the existence of violence - which exists in many leagues worldwide - is when violence becomes normalized as part of the league's "identity." At that point, the culture of violence has penetrated the mindset of administrators, fans, and players alike. Violence becomes the "new normal," and every reform effort must begin by breaking that state.

Conclusion: Time to shift from punishment to education

Returning to the European expert's statement - "welcome to the V-League, where culture must be trained from youth level" - this is not a reproach but a prescription. It asks a bigger question for everyone who loves Vietnamese football: Are we willing to accept a multi-year reform path, or will we keep seeking immediate fixes - a heavier ban, a public apology, a strong statement in the press - before letting everything continue as before?

A single line in regulation changes, and a generation of football philosophy changes with it. If VFF and VPF truly commit to building football culture from the foundation, they will not stop at heavier penalties. They will invest in coach education, technical curriculum, and a conduct standard taught and reinforced at every level - from academies to first teams, from grassroots leagues to the national team.

The next V-League round will take place this weekend. On the pitches, rain may still fall, tackles will remain fierce, and referees will still make split-second decisions. The question is not how many red cards that match will produce. The question is whether we - as football makers, football managers, football fans - are ready to change how we see the problem. Because once the perception changes, everything else begins to move.