Bau Duc: “Vietnamese football needs to know how to generate money”

Twenty years ago, on a late-year afternoon in Pleiku, I stood on the makeshift stand of a training pitch freshly levelled amid the red basalt earth. Dust clung to every step, and under a honey-coloured sun, a group of Gia Lai children ran their final laps around the touchline. I remember one boy in an oversized shirt, barefoot, striking the ball with the instep of his foot as if it were the only way he could tell the world he existed. None of us that day knew that nearly two decades later, that face would appear on billboards along the streets of Hanoi, and this red soil would become one of the underground springs feeding the national team.

The man behind that academy, Mr Doan Nguyen Duc, the name the whole country knows as “Bau Duc”, has just spoken ahead of the Vietnam Football Federation (VFF) Congress for the 2026–2030 term. His remarks circled one idea: Vietnamese football needs to know how to “generate money”. I write the news, but I tell destinies — because behind that sentence about money lies a larger story about how a football nation defines who it is.

I have sat through four VFF Congresses, and every time, that meeting room sounded like a market of hopes. People talked about the World Cup dream, about qualifying for continental tournaments, about the generations of players who would carry Vietnam beyond the borders of Southeast Asia. But this year something is different. The biggest question before the Congress is this: where does the money come from to feed that dream, and who manages it.

Bau Duc is a particular figure in this story, because he once served as VFF Vice Chairman for Finance. He knows the inner workings of an organisation that the law defines as a “social-professional organisation” — a legal label that limits its ability to operate as a genuine commercial enterprise. He is also the man who poured real money and real time into a football academy founded in 2026, run on a model that teaches football alongside culture and foreign languages. From that cradle emerged names every fan knows by heart: Nguyen Cong Phuong, Luong Xuan Truong, Nguyen Tuan Anh, Nguyen Van Toan, Nguyen Van Thanh, Nguyen Phong Hong Duy.

The market, for me, always carries a private doubt. People call it a market; I call it a garden where lives are sown. The figures in the papers — a contract worth a few million dollars, a wage of a few dozen billion dong — are like blossoms that flower for one season and fade, leaving behind a root quietly clinging to the earth. And the roots of Vietnamese football, for years, have grown from very few patches of ground: a handful of academies, and a handful of patrons.

In this conversation, Mr Duc put the issue more bluntly than many expected. He said professionalisation and commercialisation demand very large financial resources; that the VFF needs businessmen who can create cash flow, who can govern, and above all who dare to spend. He also warned that the problem of Vietnamese football cannot rest on a few academies or a few patrons. That warning carries more weight than usual, because he is the man who has embodied the “one patron” model for two decades.

Bau Duc's core argument fits in a single short line: to go far, you must have resources; to use resources effectively, you must change how you manage. Without money, do not talk about reaching the top. Directionally, this argument stands. A nation that wants to reach the World Cup — especially in the era of the expanded 48-team tournament — must invest sustainably in facilities, coaching staff and youth development. That is a lesson every mid-tier football nation must learn.

What deserves more thought is a gap nobody in that meeting room wants to name: financial transparency. Across the entire story about resources, there is not a single concrete figure for the VFF's revenue, for V.League club budgets, for wage bills, or for broadcasting cash flows. People say more money is needed, but few say clearly how much we have and where it goes. A football nation that wants to commercialise successfully must first be able to account for itself. You cannot sell a product whose true value you do not know.

Why is it so? Because most clubs in Vietnam exist on the wallet of a single individual. The patron model has sustained this country's football for decades, but it carries a structural risk: the fate of the club is bound tightly to the financial fate of one person. When the patron prospers, the team soars; when the patron struggles, the team stumbles. Bau Duc himself has admitted he had to pay the price for his investment decisions. That is a valuable confession, because it comes from inside the game.

I once watched a V.League match where the stands were so empty that two defenders calling to each other echoed across the pitch. The applause in an empty stadium is the most humane lie football has ever created. It makes people believe football is still alive, when in truth it is breathing through a single machine. Only a football nation with real spectators, real television contracts and real shirt sales stands on its own two feet. The rest is subsidy dressed in a prettier name: heartfelt investment.

Here, scale is part of the story. The V.League has a modest number of clubs, and the league's commercial base — broadcasting rights, sponsorship, matchday revenue — remains thin compared with regional leagues such as the Thai League or J.League. This gap does not lie in the fans' love; Vietnamese people love football as much as any nation. It lies in the system: how the league is organised, how benefits are shared between federation and clubs, and how businesses see this sport as an investment channel rather than a social obligation.

In 2026, when competitions had to pause and the stands stood empty, I sat with more than forty fan stories in a small forum called Football Memory. People told me about the smell of grass after rain, about the roar of nights gone by, about fathers who took their sons to the stadium and never came back. I realised that fans are not merely spectators; they are co-authors of every value football creates. If so, every commercialisation must begin by giving them back a product worthy of that love — a transparent league, a club that feels close, a ticket not sold at an extortionate price.

The 2026 World Cup expands to 48 teams, and Asia gains additional finals places. This is an unprecedented opportunity for a football nation like Vietnam. But the opportunity only means something if the development system is deep enough to produce many generations of players, not just one golden generation. A World Cup place cannot be built by a few patrons, however generous.

So what does Mr Duc propose? He speaks of mobilising social resources — businesses joining youth training, facilities, nutrition and expertise. He stresses the role of businessmen who spend their own money, because in his view only those who pay directly have the motivation to find a suitable management model. This is the “skin in the game” argument. On the surface, it makes sense. But it is also a double-edged sword: a football nation that relies on the goodwill of individuals is one not yet institutionalised, and therefore still fragile.

Here, I want to offer some contrarian angles, because a mature football nation must withstand hard questions.

First, the argument that “you need money to go far” is directionally right but easily slides into pure financial materialism. World football history has no shortage of modest-budget nations beating wealthier opponents through coaching quality, talent density and tactical organisation. Iceland took a country of under half a million people to the Euros; Croatia, with a population of about 3.8 million, reached the 2026 World Cup final. Money matters, but money is not the only variable that decides success. If the whole football nation talks only of money while forgetting coaching education, a playing philosophy and a development culture, the money will flow in and flow out again, leaving a system still hollow.

Second, the very model Bau Duc represents is part of the problem he wants to solve. He warns against relying on a few academies or a few patrons, yet Vietnamese football has lived on that model for years. His academy is one of the main arteries of the national team — that is both a source of pride and a warning. When talent is concentrated in a few cradles, the whole system becomes dependent on the timing of generations. The players born in the mid-1990s from that academy carried Vietnam's national team for years. As they pass their peak, the system must produce an equivalent new generation, or a gap will show. That is concentration risk, and it cannot be solved simply by summoning more money.

Third, the question of power and international representation. Mr Duc speaks of Vietnam needing people inside international football bodies such as FIFA, the AFC and the AFF to protect interests and catch trends. This is a bright point rarely discussed, and from my experience following matches as well as Congresses, it has a solid basis. A seat on continental committees carries real power, not mere prestige: it influences scheduling, the allocation of tournament places and development funding. In other words, it is the power to shape the rules of the game. But this is also where conflicts of interest easily arise. A man who is both a club owner, a former federation finance leader, and a voice on the federation's financial model — he must be heard, but he must also be questioned.

And here is the biggest blind spot. A speech before the Congress cannot stop at the question of where the money comes from. It must ask further: how is the money managed, who supervises it, and what do the fans — who contribute through love and tickets — get back. Football is a spiritual gift given away, but it is also a community asset. When a football nation commercialises, it needs transparent mechanisms so the community knows where its money goes. Without that, money however plentiful only generates swirls of power, not generations of players.

There is one image I cannot shake. That boy running on a tightrope, now a guide for new dreams. The academy amid the red soil has fulfilled its mission for a period: it proved that Vietnamese people can develop top-class players, that basalt can produce stars. But one academy cannot carry a whole football nation. And one patron, however devoted, cannot replace a system.

In more than fifty years in this trade, I have learned one thing: football's finest moments do not come from expensive contracts. The sixty-million-pound whirlwind is only a passing breeze; what remains are the quiet nights of training. Those nights happen in Pleiku or anywhere in this country, under a faint yellow light, when children play until their eyes can no longer see the touchline. No businessman pays for those nights. No television contract broadcasts them. Yet that is where the fate of Vietnamese football is written. If the conversation about money takes place while forgetting those nights, we are building a house without a foundation.

Nor do I want to fall into the trap of romanticising poverty. Poverty is not beautiful. A young player who is not fed well, a coach not properly educated, a stadium without decent grass — these are failures of a system, not material for poetry. Mr Duc is right that without money you cannot speak of reaching the top. What remains open is this: where that money comes from, how it is managed, and whom it serves. That is the question a VFF Congress for the 2026–2030 term must answer, not with slogans but with a plan that has figures, a roadmap and oversight.

I left those lines about the speech with a strange feeling. On one hand, I believe Mr Duc is touching the true sinew of the problem: Vietnamese football is bigger than its wallet, and it needs a commercial base strong enough not to depend on anyone's charity. On the other hand, I do not believe that more money is enough. A football nation can grow rich quickly, but a football culture takes a generation to mature.

This generation passes to the next not technique, but the way of rising after a defeat. The players of the Pleiku academy taught Vietnamese football how to dream. The next generation must learn how to build — how to raise a system that does not collapse when one man decides to stop. This Congress may be only a vote on personnel. But it could also be the moment Vietnamese football asks itself whether it wants to be a garden of a few gardeners, or a field for an entire nation.