Four V-League Clubs Fall in the 2026-2027 National Cup Qualifiers: Reading the Bench and the Unpaid Bills

In the 90th+4 minute at Quy Nhon Stadium, the referee pointed to the penalty spot. There was no drumbeat on the terraces long enough to fill the emptiness. Hoang Anh Gia Lai were losing 1-3 to Hung Yen, and the penalty could only narrow the deficit. The ball went in, the score became 2-3, and the final whistle followed almost immediately. I was sitting thousands of kilometres away, in front of a screen, my left hand holding a notebook with a worn spine. Before writing down a scoreline, I always note the stadium name first and estimate the crowd density. For this match, the second box was left blank. Quy Nhon is a temporary home, not Pleiku, and a team from the highlands playing on soil that is not theirs loses the cheapest weapon football gives them: noise behind their backs. That same weekend, at Lach Tray, Hai Phong lost 0-1. In Thanh Hoa, the hosts lost 0-2. In Phu Tho, Hong Linh Ha Tinh went out on penalties. Four defeats for V-League sides against first-division opponents, three of them at home. One round, four falls The 2026-2027 National Cup qualifiers took place across two weekend days with eight matches. Among the V-League clubs involved, only Bac Ninh kept face with a 3-2 win away at Long An. The other four representatives went out. Thanh Hoa lost 0-2 at home to Becamex Ho Chi Minh City, a club just relegated to the first division and a strong candidate for promotion back. The visitors' squad was in no way inferior to the hosts', and with greater determination they won without much trouble. Hoang Anh Gia Lai lost 2-3 to Hung Yen at Quy Nhon, the temporary home chosen while Pleiku reworks its pitch because of poor drainage in heavy rain. Without the familiar support of the highlands crowd, coach Le Quang Trai's side trailed 1-3 from the 77th minute before pulling one back from the penalty spot in the 90th+4. Hai Phong lost 0-1 at home to Thep Can Tho, a club that has just relocated from Quang Ninh to Can Tho and lost its opening match of the 2026-2027 first division. Only days after joining his new club, striker Thaileon scored the only goal of the game in the first half. Hong Linh Ha Tinh lost 2-3 on penalties at Phu Tho after a 0-0 draw in normal time. Why V-League clubs take the short road For many V-League clubs, especially those without ambitions of challenging at the top, the National Cup has never been a priority. The deeper a team goes, the greater the travel, accommodation and recovery costs. Squad management becomes harder as the V-League calendar runs in parallel. Meanwhile, top-flight survival carries financial and sporting value far beyond a cup round. This approach is nothing new. It sits inside the operating logic of most mid-table Vietnamese clubs, whose season budget only stretches to one front. When a first-division side enters the match with clear goals and greater hunger, the gap in quality on paper flattens quickly. Thanh Hoa are the clearest case. The club only knew it would survive shortly before the 2026-2027 V-League kicked off. Their squad is thin because there is not enough money to keep key players or sign replacements. On top of that, before facing Becamex Ho Chi Minh City, Thanh Hoa confronted a fresh concern. FIFA ordered the club to pay more than 305,000 USD, roughly 8 billion dong, to Rimario Gordon after the Jamaican striker filed a complaint. If the matter is not settled within 45 days of receiving the document on 16 September, the club will be banned from registering new players for three transfer windows. The complication is that the debt arose under the previous sponsor, while the club has already been handed over to a new one. An old invoice, a new administration, and a squad growing thinner. Under those circumstances, rotating the squad in the National Cup is an understandable choice, even if the consequence was a 0-2 home defeat. Three stories behind the scorelines At Quy Nhon, Hoang Anh Gia Lai's problem lay in squad depth. This season their resources are thinner than last, and they had just suffered two straight defeats at the start of the 2026-2027 V-League. Against a Hung Yen side full of ambition, the hosts collapsed quickly. Trailing 1-3 from the 77th minute, the injury-time penalty only softened the score. Seven years following teams has taught me that the order and timing of substitutions tell a clearer story than the scoreline. When a team is two goals down and brings on young players who have never started, they are protecting their season rather than chasing a cup tie. At Lach Tray, the story belonged to the visitors. Thep Can Tho had just changed location and lost their opening first-division game, yet they still had the organisation to keep a clean sheet at a V-League ground. Thaileon, signed only days earlier, scored the only goal in the first half. That goal came from preparation, not luck. At Phu Tho, Hong Linh Ha Tinh drew 0-0 in normal time and lost on penalties. The shootout is a zone where data has limited power, and where the side regarded as underdogs often holds the psychological edge. The hosts had nothing to lose, while the visitors carried the weight of an entire season into each kick. Bac Ninh deserves separate mention. Winning 3-2 at Long An, they showed a different approach: treating the National Cup as a real opportunity for players who rarely start in the V-League, rather than a burden to be cleared. The difference between winning and losing in a cup qualifier often comes down to how a team frames a single match. In Europe, national cups are famous for exactly this kind of upset. I have lived in Paris for more than a decade, long enough to see that a lower-division side beating a top-flight one in the Coupe de France is treated as the tournament's identity, not a sign of decline. Something similar is happening in Vietnam, except that the results are usually read through emotion rather than analysis. The counter-view: indifference does not explain everything The familiar explanation that V-League clubs lost because they did not want to win is only partly right. If rotation alone were the issue, a well-organised team could still get through a qualifier without fielding its strongest eleven. What makes these four defeats notable is that those clubs lack the depth to rotate and still keep their structure. That is the blind spot. One evidence-based point deserves emphasis: first-division clubs invested more seriously this season. Becamex Ho Chi Minh City were relegated but kept a squad roughly comparable to a mid-table V-League side, with a clear promotion target. Thep Can Tho, despite relocating and losing their opener, had enough organisation to win at Lach Tray. The gap between the two tiers is narrower than the old reading suggests. Conversely, calling this a disaster for Vietnamese football is also inaccurate. The National Cup exists to give lower-division teams a chance, and when Becamex Ho Chi Minh City or Thep Can Tho win, the tournament is doing exactly what it should. The real issue is that V-League clubs without ambition need to rethink the long game: an early exit saves money but also removes competitive minutes for reserve players, who matter in the run-in. In 2026, following the France national team in Russia, I recorded 214 pressing actions and 38 ball recoveries from Olivier Giroud across seven matches, despite his single goal. Contributions that never appear on a scoreboard usually decide final outcomes. In the other direction, a cup qualifier defeat does not fully describe a team's quality, but it exposes squad depth and the readiness of the backroom operation fairly clearly. What to watch next For Thanh Hoa, the 45-day deadline from 16 September is the most important internal signal, because it determines whether they can add players in the next three transfer windows. For Hoang Anh Gia Lai, the question is where early-season points will come from while playing away from home in Quy Nhon. For Hai Phong and Hong Linh Ha Tinh, leaving the cup costs little, but it sets a clear requirement: the saved energy must become league points, otherwise the calculation means nothing. Across seven years of following teams, I still count how often a player touches the ball in the opposition half rather than trusting a feeling, because feelings tend to mislead after a defeat. What I keep after each round is usually a short line scribbled in haste, not a headline. This time the line reads that the distance between the V-League and the first division is narrower than many believe, and the teams that prepare best for their own season are the ones who do not care who calls them underdogs.