135,000 Seats in Hanoi and 18 Years Stalled at 50% in Chon Buri

Late on the last Saturday of the month, the small eatery run by Hoa on Tsuruhashi street in Osaka was still lit after the city had gone to sleep. I sat in my usual corner, one earbud in, the other ear catching the Thai sports bulletin on the television. On screen, the presenter kept repeating a word that the Thai press is using a great deal these days: chạnh lòng — the feeling of being left behind. The mechanic sitting next to me, from Ha Tinh, twelve years in Japan, turned and asked in a voice half-believing, half-doubting: "Is it true, brother, that Vietnam is building a stadium with one hundred and thirty-five thousand seats?" I nodded. He was quiet for a moment, then added: "And yet back home, hardly anyone knows." That sentence followed me home to my small apartment until nearly dawn. I sat down, opened the pile of documents about the stadium race quietly reshaping the map of Southeast Asian football, and understood that people don't remember the score, they remember why they didn't leave the bar — but this time, what kept people from leaving was a blueprint.

The story begins with numbers I have been following for months. In Hanoi, the PVF stadium project, with a capacity of 60,000 seats and a retractable roof, owned by the Ministry of Public Security, is scheduled to break ground in December 2026 and be completed in March 2027. At the same time, the Trống Đồng stadium complex, backed by VinFast, with a capacity of 135,000 seats, is under construction. Across the border, Thailand is still discussing the Bang Ping complex at a figure of roughly 30 billion baht, about 0.85 billion US dollars, but remains at the proposal and commentary stage. And the name that makes every comparison feel cold: Chon Buri stadium, 20,000 seats, begun in 2026, now only about 50 percent complete and effectively frozen for eighteen years.

I re-read the series from Brand Inside, Matichon, Thairath, Bangkok Post, Nation TV. I noted the citations from Neosis, Globo, The Sun that the Thai press uses to say the whole world is watching Vietnam. I scrolled through the SoccerSuck forum, where Thai fans argue late into the night. And I realized: this is not a transfer story, nor a tactical commentary. This is a story about concrete, about budgets, about regional pride, and about a World Cup 2042 dream no one is sure of reaching. The rhythm of a team is not in the players' legs, it is in the shared heartbeat of an entire city — and this time, that heartbeat is being poured in cement.

Four projects, four speeds, and a gap that cannot be hidden

The first thing that caught my attention was how these four projects, placed side by side, create a picture that is almost an analysis in itself. PVF's 60,000 seats are taking shape on a specific timeline. Trống Đồng's 135,000 seats are under construction, and that figure — if it comes true — would place Vietnam among the largest stadiums on the planet. Thailand's Bang Ping remains on paper at 30 billion baht. And Chon Buri, after eighteen years, is still half-finished.

The gap here is not about who is richer. The gap is about who has started pouring foundations and who is still in meetings. When a project moves from blueprint to construction site, it is no longer willpower — it becomes responsibility with dates, contractors, and schedules. Chon Buri is the most painful proof of the opposite: a project can exist for eighteen years without ever truly living.

Based on my experience following matches and football infrastructure projects in the region for more than three decades, I have learned one thing: people usually judge a football nation by its league table, but what determines its long-term fate lies in things that never appear on a scoreboard — training pitches, dressing rooms, runways, and stands capable of holding a continental final.

Different funding models, and that is the core

There is a detail the Thai press mentions but rarely analyzes deeply: the source of capital. PVF is owned by the Ministry of Public Security — a state-capital model tied to strategic purposes. Trống Đồng has VinFast backing — strategic corporate capital. These are two different capital streams but with one shared trait: they do not depend on the public budget cycle, and they can be launched simultaneously. That ability to run two major projects in parallel is the strongest signal of fundraising capacity Vietnam is showing.

Bang Ping is different. It remains caught in the vortex of public budgets and political decisions. The 30 billion baht figure sounds enormous, but a number on paper cannot pour a foundation. And the Chon Buri lesson shows: when a project depends on too many decision-making layers without a single accountable owner, it can die slowly and silently.

I have no balance-sheet, revenue, or operating-cost data for any of these projects, so I do not rush to conclude on financial sustainability in the manner of European football financial-fair-play metrics. But I can say one thing with certainty: the difference between Vietnam and Thailand right now is not a difference of ambition, but a difference of commitment — commitment measured by groundbreaking dates, not by statements.

Chon Buri: eighteen years as a reminder

I have stood before unfinished construction sites many times. Everywhere they have their own smell — damp cement, rusted steel, and the smell of things that should have been finished long ago. Chon Buri, at 50 percent after eighteen years, is the embodiment of a very Southeast Asian kind of failure: not failure for lack of money from the start, but failure for lack of a single person accountable to the end.

When I talk with infrastructure people in Japan, they usually ask me a simple question: who signs the final paper? In Japan, every major project has a clear owner, a clear timeline, and a public progress mechanism. In many other places in the region, the answer to that question is usually: no one knows.

Chon Buri is precisely that answer — "no one knows." And because of that, it becomes the most frightening yardstick in this entire story. A country can talk about the World Cup for as many years as it likes, but when you look at a 20,000-seat stadium that has stalled halfway for eighteen years, you understand that a dream can be buried under unfinished concrete no matter how big it is.

An empty stadium does not make the match smaller, it only makes the memory bigger. But a stadium that is never completed has no memory at all — only a void the whole city walks past every day.

The media shock and Thai public pressure

What caught my attention was not the numbers, but the way the Thai press tells the story. They do not just report on Vietnam — they use Vietnam's image as a mirror to remind themselves. Brand Inside, Matichon, Thairath all ran comparison pieces at once. On the SoccerSuck forum, fans argue into the night. And when expert Witthaya Laohakul — a former Thai national player, now a respected commentator — says Vietnam is ahead, that remark carries a different weight than a fan's complaint.

I call this a public-opinion pressure cycle in an acceleration phase. It starts with comparison, spreads through newsrooms, reaches experts, and finally creates a nameless political pressure. That pressure does not change the league table, but it can change budgets.

There is a subtle thing I want readers to notice: the Thai media's use of Vietnam's image to push domestic action is a deliberate agenda-setting strategy, not neutral reporting. They do not praise Vietnam for Vietnam's sake — they praise Vietnam to force Thailand to react. This is the kind of journalism I have seen in many places: using someone else's shadow to measure your own.

And that worry is real. I have stayed in bars until nearly dawn many times to hear people cry, sing, and refuse to go home after a defeat. But the feeling of being left behind in an infrastructure race is a different emotion — it does not flare up and fade, it smolders and can become either motivation or a wound.

The hosting-rights question: 2042 is not an open round

This is the point I want to spend the most time on, because it is where most articles pass over too quickly.

Building stadiums and winning the right to host a World Cup are two entirely different stories. FIFA has a formal bidding process, with requirements for government guarantees, technical stadium standards, transport, media, and safety infrastructure. Stadiums are necessary but far from sufficient.

More importantly: the current cycle is already allocated. The 2034 World Cup belongs to Saudi Arabia. The 2042 milestone the press mentions lies outside the currently open bidding round. That means today's race — if it can be called a race — is really positioning before the bidding round opens, not a vote in progress.

I say this not to quash hope. I say it so we stay clear-headed. A World Cup ticket is never awarded to the nation with the most beautiful stadiums, but to the nation that meets the most criteria in a complex political and technical process. Vietnam building two large stadiums is a good signal, but it is only the first step on a very long road.

There is another possibility few articles mention: joint hosting within ASEAN. If Vietnam and Thailand — or several countries in the region — stand together in one consortium, this bilateral race becomes a story of cooperation. Then what the press calls a "race" becomes a sharing of parts. This is the most politically plausible scenario, but also the least discussed because it does not sell news.

White elephant risk: when the stands have no one to sit in them

I have seen large stadiums in many places around the world. The most beautiful stadiums are usually the ones with people coming every week. The saddest stadiums are the ones that open only a few times a year for a major event and otherwise sit silent like a giant warehouse.

A 135,000-seat stadium raises a question no one has answered: who will fill it on ordinary days? In Europe, the largest stadiums belong to clubs with tens of thousands of loyal fans every week. In Southeast Asia, no club can regularly fill a 135,000-seat stadium. That does not mean it should not be built — but it does mean there must be a post-construction usage plan, and such a plan was not mentioned in any article I read.

This is why I rate the "white elephant" risk as high. It is not a construction risk — Vietnam is proving it can build. It is an operating risk: a giant structure can become a burden if there is no event stream strong enough to feed it.

Nostalgia is how a stadium tells stories when no one sits in the stands. But a stadium that has never had anyone sitting in it has no story to tell at all.

A contrarian view: the biggest misunderstanding of this race

There is a misunderstanding I see repeated in almost every article on this topic: people equate "building stadiums" with "winning hosting rights." The two are merged into one, and that very merge creates the so-called "race."

The truth is that the infrastructure part has a basis — projects are genuinely breaking ground, with dates and contractors. But the hosting part has no basis at all, because 2042 is not an open bidding round. The press is mixing the two together, and the result is a sense of urgency far greater than reality.

There is a second, subtler misunderstanding. Citations from Neosis, Globo, The Sun are used to say the whole world admires Vietnam. But when I traced them, many were just short mentions, sometimes a single sentence in a roundup. International admiration is real, but thinner than the way it is presented. This is something I always remind myself when writing: do not let a beautiful citation make you forget to check how thick it really is.

And the third misunderstanding, perhaps the most important: this race is not a race between Vietnam and Thailand. It is a race between those two nations and themselves — with their ability to turn promises into projects, and projects into something people actually use. Thailand is losing at the first stage. Vietnam is winning at the first stage but has not yet proven the second. And neither has touched the third, which is the hardest: winning hosting rights in a process no one in the region controls.

I keep the rhythm of the story, because I have seen it fall and rise many times. I have seen teams praised today and criticized tomorrow. I have seen projects treated as turning points and then quietly stop. And I have seen things that seemed small become the foundation for a whole generation.

The most striking thing in this entire story, to me, is not the figure of 135,000 or 60,000. It is that Thailand is looking at Vietnam with a gaze it never used before. For decades, Thailand considered itself the football and events center of Southeast Asia. That it must now use Vietnam's image to push itself is a reversal of status, and reversals of status always hurt more than people expect.

But I also want to say something to my fellow Vietnamese, because I promised myself I would not sugarcoat. Building a stadium is one thing. Having a football ecosystem strong enough to fill that stadium every week is another, and far harder. A 135,000-seat stadium does not create a football nation by itself. It only amplifies what already exists — if the football is weak, it amplifies the weakness; if the football is strong, it amplifies the strength.

I stood in the press area at Yanmar Nagai stadium in 2026, heard 25,000 fans shake the ground after Okuno's goal, and understood that what made that moment was not the stadium — it was the people. The stadium is only a frame. A frame can make a memory bigger, but it cannot create a memory out of nothing.

The next internal signal

So what should we watch in the coming months? I do not watch the praise pieces. I watch three very specific things.

First, PVF's progress. The March 2027 milestone is a promise with a date. If it slips, that is a signal about execution capacity. If it holds, that is the strongest signal Vietnam can send.

Second, whether Thailand announces a concrete Bang Ping roadmap. If it does, the "Vietnam is ahead" narrative can reverse very quickly, because media races are fragile by nature. If it stays at the proposal stage, public pressure will keep rising and could become a political lever to unlock budgets in the next cycle.

Third, and most important, the post-completion usage plan for both Vietnamese stadiums. This is the least discussed but most decisive. A stadium is only beautiful when people come to watch. And those people do not appear on their own — they must be nurtured by a healthy football ecosystem, by attractive tournaments, by nights when the whole city stays awake.

At my age, people do not count trophies; they count the nights the whole city stayed awake. And I want to believe that in the coming years, there will be such nights in Hanoi, in a new stadium, with a generation of fans who have never known the feeling of being left behind. But for that to happen, we need more than numbers on a blueprint. We need someone accountable to the end, a timeline that is not bent, and a football ecosystem strong enough to fill the giant frame we are building.