Three Candidates Contest the VFF Chairman Seat: When Private Capital Knocks on the Door of Vietnamese Football Governance

In October 2026, the candidate list for the VFF 10th-term congress (2026-2030) was published. Three names appeared for the Chairman position: Tran Quoc Tuan, Nguyen Duc Thuy, and Nguyen Xuan Vu. But the truly notable thing is not the Chairman list — it is another list, twice as long: six candidates for the Vice Chairman for Finance and Sponsorship Mobilization. Six people for one position. This is the most significant structural signal in the entire VFF leadership picture. I have followed VFF congresses since 2026, when I worked in the sports department of a television station. Across four congresses, I have observed a pattern: the Chairman seat is usually decided before the congress convenes, while the Vice Chairman seats are where the real shifts in Vietnamese football's power structure are reflected. This year, that force has a name: banking capital and construction capital. Nguyen Duc Thuy — commonly known as bau Thuy — is a first-time Chairman candidate. Born in 2026, he comes from the construction sector and has ties to LPBank, the bank that is the main sponsor of the V-League. Vu Quoc Khanh, LPBank's CEO, also appears in the list of six Finance Vice Chairman candidates. Le Van Thanh, Chairman of Dong Luc company, is also on that list. Three of the six finance candidates come from the same ecosystem: banking and construction. This is not a minor detail. It shows that Vietnamese football's governance layer is becoming an attractive destination for non-football capital. Previously, VFF was primarily led by figures with backgrounds in sports or the state apparatus. Now, businessmen — those who control the money flow — want a direct voice in the allocation of football's resources. Tran Quoc Tuan, the incumbent Chairman, is not standing still. He has registered for both the Chairman seat and the Vice Chairman for Professional Affairs seat. This is a move worth analyzing. An incumbent Chairman seeking re-election typically registers for only one seat — the highest one. Tuan's additional registration for the professional affairs seat suggests he is hedging: if he loses the Chairmanship, he can still retain a position in the leadership. That is the behavior of someone who is not certain of victory. But the number needs context. Tuan has led VFF through term IX (2026-2026), a period that saw the national team qualify for major tournaments and youth football make certain strides. However, his term also witnessed controversies over tournament organization, club rights, and transparency in governance. His dual registration is not just a personal strategy — it reflects an internal political environment where even the top leader dares not bet everything on a single vote. Nguyen Xuan Vu, the third candidate, is the incumbent Vice Chairman for Communications and Foreign Affairs. He is the only candidate without an opponent on the list: only one person registered for the Communications and Foreign Affairs seat, and that is Vu. This is the most certain outcome in the entire race. Regardless of who wins the Chairmanship, Vu will be in the 10th-term leadership. That certainty raises a question: why does no one want to contest the Communications and Foreign Affairs seat? There are two possibilities. One is that Vu has performed so well that no one wants to challenge him. The other is that this portfolio is not seen as a center of power — it does not control finance, does not control professional affairs, does not control the league. In a race where the Finance seat has six candidates, the fact that the Communications seat has only one candidate is a signal about how the various forces value each position. The Vice Chairman for Professional Affairs seat has three candidates: Tran Huy Duc, Tran Quoc Tuan, and Tran Anh Tu. Tran Anh Tu is the most notable figure in this group. He is both VFF Vice Chairman of term IX and Chairman of the VPF board — the company that operates Vietnam's professional football leagues. If Tu wins the Professional Affairs Vice Chairmanship, he will have direct influence over both the national team and the professional league system. That is a significant concentration of power. Tran Huy Duc, the other candidate, is a VFF Executive Committee member of term IX. He receives less media attention, but his presence on the list shows that the Professional Affairs seat is not a pre-arranged position. If it were arranged, there would be only one candidate. One point needs clarification about the process. The candidate list is not the final result. Before the congress takes place, the list must pass a review by the Ministry of Home Affairs and the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism. This is a substantive control gate: any candidate with unresolved legal, financial, or reputational issues can be eliminated before the congress votes. The list was published on October 21, after the nomination deadline of October 19, but it is not yet the final confirmed list. The gap between October 2026 and January 2027 — the expected congress date — is about 14 months. This is an unusually long period compared to previous congresses. It creates two consequences. First, candidates have time to campaign, build alliances, and adjust strategies. Second, the list published today is not guaranteed to remain unchanged by January 2027. Candidates may withdraw, and new names may appear. In that context, the dual registrations of Tran Quoc Tuan and Nguyen Duc Thuy raise a question about the rules. Do VFF statutes permit one person to contest multiple seats at the same congress? The original article does not specify. If the statutes permit it, this is a valid strategy. If not, one of the two candidates could be eliminated from one of the seats — and the election outcome would change significantly. Another factor needs to be placed on the scale: the relationship between LPBank and the V-League. LPBank is the main sponsor of the V-League. Nguyen Duc Thuy has ties to LPBank. If Thuy wins the Chairmanship or the Finance Vice Chairmanship, there will be an overlap between the role of sponsor and the role of decision-maker on football's finances. This is a potential conflict of interest for which no public mechanism has been outlined in the original article. It must be emphasized: a conflict of interest does not equate to wrongdoing. It simply means there needs to be a transparency mechanism to ensure that decisions on sponsorship, revenue distribution, and broadcasting rights are not influenced by the interests of a specific group of shareholders. In European football, federations have rules requiring officials to disclose interests. In Vietnam, this mechanism has not been publicly discussed. I once wrote an incorrect report about a young player because I looked only at physical data and ignored game-reading ability. That lesson applies here: if I look only at the candidate list without looking at the interest structure behind it, I will miss the most important thing. The list tells you who is running. The sponsorship structure tells you who actually holds power. One more point needs to be placed in a broader context. The emergence of banking and construction businessmen in the VFF candidate list is not a unique phenomenon to Vietnam. In many Southeast Asian countries, football federations have witnessed a similar shift: from purely sports leadership to leadership with business origins. This trend has a positive side — businessmen bring financial management skills and commercial networks. But it also has a risk side — business interests can override long-term football development interests. What is notable is that across the entire candidate list, no candidate has published an election platform. No one has stated clearly what they will do with the youth training system, with the naturalization policy, with the choice of foreign versus domestic coaches, with the revenue distribution structure between VFF and the clubs. The original article only lists names and titles. This is a significant information gap — because the vote at the congress will decide who leads, but the platform decides what they will do. When I followed the Vietnamese national team's matches in the 2026 World Cup qualifiers, I noted one detail: the number of young players promoted to the national team over the past two years is lower than in the 2026-2026 period. This is a signal about the youth training system — or about how head coaches assess the available resources. The person in the Professional Affairs Vice Chairman seat will have direct influence over how this issue is addressed. But no candidate has mentioned it. Another unanswered question: who will control VPF? Tran Anh Tu is currently Chairman of the VPF board. If Tu wins the VFF Professional Affairs Vice Chairmanship, will he continue to hold the VPF seat? If so, his power will extend from the national team to the national championship. If not, who will replace him at VPF? The original article does not address this. This is the kind of question that youth academy observers like me typically ask: not who wins, but what the power structure will look like after the win. A chairman can change, but the system takes time. And the youth training system — the thing that determines the future of Vietnamese football over the next 10 years — depends on resource allocation decisions that receive far less attention than national team matches. I do not need a perfect candidate. I need a candidate who knows they are not perfect — and has a concrete plan to compensate for the gaps. The current candidate list tells me who is running. It does not yet tell me who among them understands that Vietnamese football's governance layer needs more than familiar names. The race for the VFF 10th-term Chairmanship is not a race between three individuals. It is a race between three governance models: the institutional continuity model (Tran Quoc Tuan), the private capital model (Nguyen Duc Thuy), and the stable insider model (Nguyen Xuan Vu). Its outcome will decide not only who sits in the highest seat, but also whether LPBank continues as the V-League's main sponsor, whether VPF retains its current position, and whether clubs benefit from a more transparent revenue structure. January 2027 is still far away. But what happens in the next 14 months — from the candidate review to the lobbying — will determine not only the congress outcome but the shape of Vietnamese football for an entire decade. I will follow every step. And I will record it, as I always do, so that it can be read again later.