Bau Duc and the Question of 'Generating Money' Ahead of the 2026–2030 VFF Congress

On an afternoon in Pleiku, after the match had ended, I stayed behind in the stands as almost everyone else had gone home. A ball boy, maybe fifteen, bent down to collect the balls one by one and stacked them neatly on a rusted cart. No one clapped for him. Behind him, the giant sponsorship board still glowed, printed with the names of companies he had never set foot in. I have covered eight World Cups, eight Olympic Games and many great races, and I have learned one thing: wherever the most money flows in, that is where people most easily forget those standing at the edge of the pitch.

A few days later, from Lyon, I read the remarks of Mr. Doan Nguyen Duc ahead of the Vietnam Football Federation (VFF) Congress for the 2026–2030 term. He said Vietnamese football needs to know how to "give birth to money." A short sentence, but it places a finger exactly on the deepest scar of my homeland's football. The problem of Vietnamese football today does not lie in the players' feet; it lies in the ledger of those sitting up high.

Duc is an insider in the fullest sense. He once held the VFF Vice Chairmanship for finance, and for more than twenty years has been chairman of Hoang Anh Gia Lai. In 2026 he founded the HAGL – Arsenal – JMG Football Academy, a training model that combines football with education and foreign languages. From that furnace came Cong Phuong, Xuan Truong, Tuan Anh, Van Toan, Van Thanh and Hong Duy — names that shaped an entire generation of fans. In recent years Vietnamese football has reaped no small success, from the U23 sides up to the national team. That success created a favourable buffer: people can now talk about reform without being accused of sabotage. And Duc chose exactly that moment to speak.

He was blunt: professionalisation and commercialisation demand very large financial resources; the VFF needs businesspeople who know how to create cash flow, know how to manage, and above all dare to spend. He also admitted he had paid the price for investment decisions. And he warned that Vietnamese football cannot rely on just a few academies or a few "patrons."

This is where I want to pause a little longer.

In Lyon, where I live, Olympique Lyonnais once walked this exact problem. Their academy produced world-class players, and for years that talent pipeline was the club's greatest asset. But when the finances revolved around selling players to cover losses, people understood that a good academy does not automatically create healthy finances. The French call it a spiral of dependency: the more you sell, the more you must develop; the more you develop, the more you hope to sell high; and when the market turns, the whole system tilts with it.

An excellent academy is a strategic national asset, but if it is the only asset, then it is also the single point of failure. Vietnamese football is in exactly that position. Talent concentrates in a few furnaces, and money concentrates in a few patrons. Two concentrations at once create a system so thin that a single personal shock — a business in trouble, a tired man — makes an entire footballing region tremble.

Hearing Duc talk about "giving birth to money," I understand he is talking about something bigger than money. He is talking about a governance model. When he proposes bringing businesspeople — people with management methods and investment thinking — into the VFF, what he wants to import is a way of thinking, not a cheque. Those who spend their own money have the motivation to find a suitable management model — that is the "skin in the game" argument, and it is not wrong.

But the truly difficult part lies elsewhere. The VFF, by its own definition, is a social-professional organisation. That means it cannot operate like a joint-stock company. To import a corporate model, one must also reform the legal framework and the internal culture. If you only change the people without changing the rules of the game, then a few years from now we will sit here again, listening to another patron say exactly this sentence.

Duc also mentioned that Vietnam needs people inside the mechanisms of FIFA, the AFC and the AFF to protect its interests and grasp the trends. This is a point the domestic media usually skips over. A seat on an AFC or AFF committee is not merely a medal to wear on the chest. It is the right to sit at the table when final-tournament slots are divided, schedules are drawn up and development money is allocated. Any country absent from that table always receives what is left over.

From Saigon to Lyon, I have learned that football never takes place only on the pitch. It takes place in meeting rooms, over dinners, in phone calls at eleven at night across two time zones. I came to Lyon to find a media wave, and I stayed to learn how to listen. What I hear here teaches me to reread what is happening back home with different eyes. Tactics will age, but the story of people never expires.

There is one thing that perhaps neither Duc nor his supporters want to say aloud. The very "patron" model he warns against is the model he has lived with for twenty years. That makes his remarks both credible and easy to distrust. A club chairman speaking about how the federation should organise its finances will always be viewed with suspicion: is he worried about football, or about his own standing in the power race before the Congress?

I do not think one must pick a side. But one should read more carefully a gap in the argument. Throughout those remarks, there was not a single figure. No broadcast revenue, no V.League club budgets, no wage bill, no financial indicator at all to show how wide the gap is between World Cup ambition and commercial reality. A debate about money without any money to compare remains a debate about feelings.

And there is another blind spot, subtler still. When the whole football world talks about money, people easily forget that some things cannot be bought: talent density, coaching quality, tactical organisation. There have been federations poorer than Vietnam that still went further, because they were good at the things that cost nothing. Saying "without money, don't talk about reaching the top" is right in direction, but it can become a convenient self-excuse for slowness in the things that should have been done long ago.

The VFF Congress of 2026–2030 is a narrow door. If reform is not written into it, it will pass like so many congresses before. What I await is not a bigger statement, but a small and concrete answer: who will publish the figures, who will be held responsible when the money does not flow, and who will stay behind in Pleiku on an afternoon when no one claps. The heartbeat never lies in the ball; it lies in people. And in Vietnam, that heartbeat is still waiting for someone patient enough to listen.