Vietnamese football and the European No.9 fever: buying stars is never buying tactics

In this summer, I attended a training session in Hanoi where a striker who once played in the German second division was unveiled to the press. Cameras flashed, the jersey was raised, and a fee of 1.5 million euros was whispered in the corridors. But what I remember most that afternoon was not the debut but a remark by the technical director of another club while reviewing footage: 'He can play well in a team that controls possession; yours is not.' That comment sent me back through the files of failed foreign signings in V-League over the past four years. From the pile of 2026 files, I learned to listen to the rustle of banknotes before the white paper. Chinese football once poured hundreds of millions of euros into European strikers after one extraordinary summer, only to resell them for half the price eighteen months later. A Portuguese agent once whispered to me: 'Money can buy a player, but not a system.' Now V-League is witnessing a similar script, slower but no less visible. Clubs like Cong An Hanoi, The Cong, and some new bosses in the central region are all hunting for 'No.9' forwards from the Bundesliga, La Liga, or lower European divisions. They expect a player who can conjure goals out of a fifteen-meter gap, forgetting that in V-League that space is usually blocked by two tightly marking Vietnamese center-backs. The current context is different from 2026. When COVID had not yet faded, I spent a long summer building a spreadsheet of out-of-contract players across 24 European leagues. That COVID season taught me one thing — when people stop meeting, data starts speaking. That data showed a group of strikers being inflated in value because of penalties, goals against weak teams, and agents who knew Southeast Asian clubs preferred looking at scoring records rather than match footage. After football returned to normal, I followed more than twenty foreign signings from Europe to Vietnam. Only four survived their first season. That number might mean nothing if I had not watched how they played: most were good at running into space in open areas but lost when compressed into tight zones. In V-League, matches are often strangled in the final third, where the opponent's pressing is not constant but enough to stop a striker from receiving the ball in rhythm. If it stopped there, the story would be simple. But I believe the problem lies deeper: Vietnamese clubs are adopting a 'half-baked' tactical approach, wanting to press high like Europe while also wanting to counterattack fast like old Southeast Asia. As a result, they buy a striker who likes to run forward, while their system needs someone who can drop deep to receive and turn. This mismatch does not show in goal stats but shows in the number of lost balls and misplaced passes in the final third. A typical example: last season, a Brazilian striker scored 12 goals in the Brazilian national championship, but when he came to V-League, he averaged only 28 touches per match and had a passing accuracy below 70%. Media blamed adaptation and even questioned his commitment. But when I rewatched the footage, he was always making the right runs into the space left by defenders, yet his teammates lacked the skill to execute those line-breaking passes. The player was not wrong; the system was. Modern football has changed the definition of a 'No.9'. Few European teams now use a lone target striker feeding off crosses. Instead, they need someone who can drop, press, and run behind full-backs. But in V-League, these requirements are often ignored. Clubs still send scouts to Portugal or Spain, only to be seduced by a hat-trick against a third-division side. I call it 'transfer blindness', a place where a player's past is embroidered into a perfect picture while the future is veiled by selective data. Look at the clubs that have succeeded in V-League recently. They did not spend big on a single European star. They bought disciplined Vietnamese players and picked foreigners to strengthen central defense or central midfield, positions that preserve the team's structure. This contradicts the story agents often tell: that a great striker can change the fate of a team. Of course there are exceptions, like a striker who scored over 15 goals to help his team win the title. But that was because he played in a system built around crosses, not because he could create something out of nothing. Those successful teams shared one trait: they did not naively press high but let the opponent have the ball and waited for mistakes. Gegenpressing, a concept that dominated European football for a decade, has been decoded by teams that park the bus. In V-League, where Vietnamese players cannot match the physical intensity of Koreans or Japanese, imitating a full pressing style is unrealistic. Successful Vietnamese teams usually choose a 'conditional pressing' version: trigger pressure only when the ball is in the opponent's half; otherwise, they drop into a compact block. In that context, a foreign striker's responsibility is to finish the few chances that come, not to build play. If the team buys a player who is used to receiving the ball to feet and holding it while expecting teammates to join, he will become useless against tight, aggressive Vietnamese defenders. There is a blind spot in failed foreign signings: they are not tested in the Southeast Asian environment. A European player can shine at his old club, surrounded by teammates with good passing quality, referees who give more protection, and smoother pitches. When moving to V-League, he faces a power-driven league full of tactical fouls and a congested fixture list. I have seen many strikers who scored in the English lower leagues unable to cope with a Vietnamese full-back following them throughout the match without special treatment. They are not inferior in skill, but they lose the psychological and physical scuffle in the tropical heat. Another example comes from the Chinese market I have covered for years. Many European stars like Carlos Tevez, Jackson Martinez, and Alexandre Pato came to Shanghai or Guangzhou with huge expectations. They scored goals, but they did not create trophies for their clubs in the short term. The reason is not that they played badly, but that these teams built their squads around individuals while opponents prepared double-teaming plans. When you depend on one player, you are easier to expose. V-League is no exception. But there is a difference: Vietnamese clubs often lack the financial muscle to keep a failing foreigner, so they quickly terminate contracts and continue the search. This loop slows the tactical development of the whole league. I remember meeting a Spanish scout in Hanoi. He opened his laptop and showed a three-minute clip of a striker playing in the Spanish third tier. In the clip, the player moved intelligently, had good positioning, and finished coldly with his left foot. But when I asked about his pressing numbers, the scout shrugged and said, 'We do not need a pressing machine; we need a scorer.' That answer startled me. How can a professional club ignore pressing as a recruitment criterion and still expect to play modern football? Football is not only about scoring; it is about how you win the ball back. A forward who does not press forces his team to defend more, which reduces his own goal-scoring chances. A vicious cycle. An insider never says 'he is coming because of a high commission.' Only outsiders are so sure. But I have witnessed enough trades to see a rule: when a club buys a foreign player without a tactical analysis from the head coach, the transfer likely comes from an agent's proposal or fans' expectations. The coach is often presented with a done deal and must adapt. If the player performs well, the credit goes to the scout; if he fails, the coach must take responsibility. This injustice makes Vietnamese coaches conservative, preferring familiar faces in the league, and unintentionally suppresses opportunities for young talents. When I reviewed data from the 2026-24 V-League season, I saw a clear correlation between a foreign striker's goals and the number of key passes from teammates. The top scorers usually came from teams with good Vietnamese playmakers, not from teams with a lone striker. For instance, a foreign striker in the championship-winning team benefited from the crossing ability of its wing-backs, while a foreigner at a 12th-place team had to create his own chances from set pieces. This shows that the system's role is far greater than the individual. However, when clubs enter the transfer window, they still look for 'a man who can score 20 goals', ignoring the fact that no one in V-League history has achieved that number without support. I had long conversations about this with a German data analyst who once worked at a Bundesliga club. He said modern European clubs use expected goals per shot to evaluate chance quality instead of just total goals. But in Southeast Asia, few clubs use this metric to recruit. They still trust the old-fashioned scout who can watch three matches and declare that a player 'has a natural instinct for goals'. Instinct is not wrong, but it needs validation through data. When I asked a Vietnamese club executive why they did not look at pressing stats, he answered: 'We do not have a data analysis department.' That answer seems funny but is the truth of an emerging football nation. There is a story I like to tell. In the summer of 2026 in Moscow, I met an agent who was negotiating to bring an African player to Russia. He pulled me into a pub and said the contract would be signed within 48 hours, but in reality everything was still vague. The beer in Moscow did not sign a contract, but it poured me something stronger: trust. I believe in football, informal agreements weigh more than a hundred sheets of paper, because humans are the deciding factor. If a club does not believe in its own tactics, it cannot transmit that believe to its new signing. Conversely, when the head coach trusts a foreigner, he will be given more help to integrate. So before signing any European striker, clubs should ask themselves: 'Do we really need a fixed point in the box, or do we need a modern forward?' The answer will differ, but it demands honesty. Looking ahead, I think V-League's transfer market will become smarter when clubs face financial difficulties. With less money to buy stars, they will be forced to either develop better local players or pragmatically sign foreigners who are at their peak. But for now, as expensive deals are still announced to the applause of supporters, I cannot help comparing to ships sailing on stormy seas. They buy a cutting-edge radio to hear weather forecasts but forget to reinforce the bow. And when the tactical storm comes, they blame the radio, not themselves. Vietnamese football does not need more expensive contracts; it needs more people who understand that football is a collective tactical sport, where a goal does not come from a moment of genius but from eleven men moving in the same breath. The question is: how long will clubs continue to hear only the applause of a debut ceremony instead of the whispering data of patience?