V.League 2026/25: When Vietnamese Football Learned Gegenpressing but Forgot Who It Was

In the match between Hanoi FC and Thep Xanh Nam Dinh at Hang Day Stadium, I counted a number that made me sit for a long time after the final whistle. In the 63rd minute, both teams combined had made 41 high-press duels — but only 3 of them led to a shot on goal. I had seen something similar in the Bundesliga over a decade ago, when Jurgen Klopp was still at Dortmund and mid-table clubs began copying the shell of the high press without understanding its core. The difference is this: in Europe, people failed and learned within two seasons. In the V.League, they fail and keep doing the same thing, only changing the name on the tactics board. That is why I am writing this piece. If you watch Vietnamese football with the naked eye, you will see teams running more, tackling harder, and midfield clashes becoming denser. But if you carry a column of data with you, you will see a completely different picture — not a picture of progress, but a picture of a collective marathon in which technical football is quietly disappearing. When I started my commentary career over thirty years ago, Vietnamese football had a clear identity. Northern clubs played disciplined, compact zone defense, launching long balls quickly to strikers. Southern clubs, especially those named after agricultural provinces, played technically, with short passing and one-touch combinations built on elegant midfielders. That contrast made the V.League rich in nuance and, more importantly, produced players with diverse skills who could play in different systems when wearing the national team shirt. Then gegenpressing arrived. Not as a philosophy studied carefully in European academies, but as a fashion trend spreading through coaches' conversations, a few YouTube clips, and the success of a handful of teams that used it sensibly. Suddenly every club — from title contenders to relegation battlers — wanted to "press high." They bought heart-rate monitors, hired fitness specialists, and ordered motion-tracking software. But most of them did not buy — or could not understand — the most important part: the structure of a proper pressing phase. Let me explain what I just said with concrete numbers, because I never press the publish button on emotion alone. The metric analysts call PPDA — passes allowed per defensive action in the opponent's three-quarters of the pitch — has dropped significantly at many V.League clubs over the past two seasons. A lower PPDA means the team is pressing more aggressively. But alongside it, those same teams' own midfield passing success rates have not improved, and in some cases have declined. This is the crux: you can force the opponent to go long if you have proper pressing structure — but if you only have enthusiasm, you are merely exchanging a short pass for a foul and a free kick in midfield. I once watched a V.League team operate this system with painful naivety. The midfield pushed up like a red wall, the two wingers cut inside to squeeze the opponent's center-backs, and the moment that center-back played a pass over the first line, the whole system stood frozen. Why? Because high pressing demands three non-negotiables: line spacing organized to the meter, synchronized block shifting when the ball switches flanks, and a center-back or deep midfielder capable of reading the ball to cover the space behind. Miss one of the three, and the system collapses within five to ten seconds. In the V.League, most teams are missing all three. This is when data becomes cruel. If you take the average distance covered per match by V.League midfielders, you will find something surprising: many midfielders run 10 to 11 km per match, with nearly a third of that distance at high speed. That number, placed beside mid-tier Asian leagues, is not low. But if you look at how that distance is distributed — how many meters sprinted, what for, and how much of it is running to compensate for a wrong position — you will understand why these teams still lose despite having "run like mad." The problem with Vietnamese football is not a lack of running, but running in the wrong direction and at the wrong moment. In other words, we are turning football into athletics with a ball. And as I have said many times on air, gegenpressing has long been decoded, but mid-table teams still use physicality to compensate for a poverty of ideas. The saddest part is when you look at young teams. Players aged 19 or 20 are trained under a "run first, think later" model. They are physically better than the previous generation, but they lack the ability to read the game, a sense of space, and what I call "deliberate slowness" — the ability to hold the ball a second longer so a teammate can get into position. A team without deliberate slowness cannot control tempo, and a team that cannot control tempo will be buried by its own match. I want to emphasize this because it runs against my instinct. My instinct is to see the heart first, the player first, the human being first. But there are moments when the heart must be guided by the head. If I only tell the story of a coach staying up all night watching video, I will soften the reality that his own training system is producing players unsuited to the system he has built. If I only praise the players who run the most, I will inadvertently endorse wasted physical effort. And if I only criticize the lack of technique, I will skip the more important question: why was this generation of players pushed into that style in the first place? That is why I always ask one question before analyzing any system: can the players sleep? It sounds silly, but the fixture density in the V.League during the peak three months is a genuine problem. When you play two matches a week for many consecutive weeks, no medical staff can save you. Muscle recovery needs time, mental recovery needs time, and in a league where road travel between provinces is long, time is the most luxurious commodity. Fixture density is the single biggest culprit behind injuries, and no tactical system — however advanced — functions when players enter a match in a state of near-exhaustion. Look at the number of hamstring and groin injuries at high-pressing V.League clubs this season and you will see a clear pattern: the load on the hamstring group spikes when a player repeatedly accelerates and decelerates, and that is exactly what gegenpressing demands. Clubs without individualized load management programs will pay with their own key players. I have tracked a club that had four of its five starting midfielders absent with hamstring injuries within three months, and sadly no one on the coaching staff questioned the link between those injuries and the running volume they were demanding. At this point, I must be honest about a weakness in my own argument. I am someone who criticizes the blind copying of gegenpressing, but I also admit that sometimes you have to walk through error to reach truth. Some Vietnamese coaches are doing the right thing but are misled by public impatience. In a match where their team must press to claw back points, decisions to push forward are rational — and sometimes they fail simply because the opponent had a superior individual. I also do not claim that traditional technical football is an absolute solution. Many Asian leagues have shown that high pressing, when executed properly, can help weaker teams beat stronger ones systematically. Vietnam's national team itself has used high-pressure phases to create surprises in successful ASEAN Cup campaigns. So I am not saying gegenpressing is wrong. I am saying that the version so many V.League clubs chase is a patchwork version, lacking foundation and without a long-term development program behind it. And here — it is easy to sit in a commentary chair and criticize. I know that. I once stood in a press room and was laughed at by male colleagues for asking a question that seemed "emotional." I was mocked when I said a certain transfer window was a crack in an entire football culture — and then was invited back when reality proved me right. But credibility is not earned by saying correct things. Credibility is built by admitting you were wrong when you were wrong, and holding firm when you still believe you were right. I have been wrong many times. But I have never been wrong when I said that a team without structure uses physicality only as a slower way to lose. So what is the solution? If I criticize without proposing, I am lazy. And laziness is something I do not allow in myself. There are three things V.League clubs need to do, and none of them requires millions of dollars. First, redefine the role of the defensive midfielder. Not the player who runs the most, but the one who reads the game best. In most failed pressing phases in the V.League, people blame the striker for not pressing enough, when in reality the problem lies with the defensive midfielder failing to cover the gap in time. Simply selecting the right person for that role changes the whole system. This is not theory — I have seen this at well-coached youth teams in Asia, where one good defensive midfielder can make an average defense solid within a single season. Second, invest in individualized data analysis rather than buying collective software. A club does not need an expensive motion-tracking system if no one knows how to read that data. But a club can start by logging each player's running volume daily, analyzing injury patterns, and adjusting individual training plans. I have seen this make a difference at small clubs, where one competent fitness specialist is worth more than ten machines nobody knows how to use. Third, and most importantly, separate technical training from physical training. In many Vietnamese academies today, a 15-year-old is taught how to press before being taught how to receive the ball on the turn. That is developmentally wrong. Technique must be built during the golden window of neural development — ages 8 to 15 — while tactical physicality should only be emphasized after 16. If we reverse that order, we will produce a generation of players who know how to run but not how to play football. And that is the worst thing that can happen to a football nation. There is one more thing I want to say, and this is something I learned during the pandemic season. Sport is not only about victory; it is tens of thousands of lives contributing their breath to make matches happen. When I sat listening to Mr. João — a Maracanã groundskeeper for twenty years — talk about losing his job overnight during lockdown, I understood that every tactical decision on the pitch has consequences off it. A team chasing gegenpressing without understanding it also creates consequences: physical load on players rises, recovery time shrinks, injuries increase, and eventually a twelve-year-old sitting on the sideline will no longer dare chase a football dream. We need to think about that before falling too in love with the shell of a European philosophy. So what do I predict? This is the most important part of this piece, because if I cannot predict something verifiable, I am only writing an emotional diary. My prediction is this: over the next two seasons, V.League clubs that play high pressing without clear structure will have a significantly higher rate of hamstring and groin injuries than the rest, and at the same time their performance in the final three matches of the season will drop markedly. Any analyst with per-club and per-period injury data can verify this. If I am right, clubs will have to return to a basic question: are we running because we understand, or are we running because we are afraid to stand still? My second prediction, and this one is bolder: at least one V.League club will fully switch to a technical ball-control model within the next two seasons, and that club will finish the season far higher than its pre-season projection. Not because it has more money, but because it chose the less contested path. In a league where everyone runs in one direction, the one who knows how to stop and think will always find space to survive — and that is the space Vietnamese football is leaving wide open. And you? The question I want to send to you, the reader, is not which club of yours will win the title this season. The question I want to send is this: when you watch a V.League match on Saturday night, are you watching football, or are you watching a long-distance race with a round ball rolling in the middle? If you sit long enough to answer that question with data and not with emotion — I believe you will see that our Vietnamese football has a future. But that future will not come on its own.