No One Runs the Touchline Anymore: The Fate of Traditional Wingers in V.League

In the 67th minute, at Hang Day Stadium, a winger received the ball right on the touchline. No one ran outside to open space. There was no shout of "go wide." He stood there, ball at his feet, back turned to stand B, and waited. Three seconds. Four seconds. Then he turned, pushed the ball inside, and vanished into a trap of two opposing centre-backs. I sat in the stand and recorded that moment. Not a good move. Not a dribble past a man. Just a winger who did not know where to run. Fifteen years ago, in that same position, a Vietnamese winger would have done the opposite. He would have pushed the ball down the line, used his pace, and crossed. The whole stand would have risen. Now, the stand is silent. And the player is silent too. No one runs the touchline anymore. This V.League season has seen a quiet but total shift. The big clubs — Ha Noi FC, Cong An Ha Noi, The Cong Viettel, Becamex Binh Duong — have all moved to an attacking model built on the inverted winger. The term "inverted winger" sounds foreign to Vietnamese football, but it has been here for a long time; no one simply gave it a name. Nguyen Van Quyet, in his peak years, was a right-footed winger playing on the left flank. He cut inside, struck from distance, and produced moments fans never forget. But Van Quyet was the exception, not the rule. He was the product of an era when Vietnamese players were taught to play through individual technique, not through systems. What is changing now is the system. Foreign coaches bring tactical models that require wingers to cut inside to open space for the attacking full-back. The full-back pushes high to open space for the central midfielder. The central midfielder controls the ball to open space for the striker. A whole machine in motion, and the winger is merely a cog. But that cog must have a certain shape. And that shape is not the shape of a traditional Vietnamese winger. I have re-watched footage of the last ten V.League matches. The number of crosses from wide areas by the leading clubs has fallen markedly compared with three seasons ago. That is data I recorded myself, not from a professional statistics system, so I will only say it reflects a trend, not an absolute conclusion. But that trend has a cause. Vietnamese wingers are typically small, short, and not superior in pace to the naturalised or foreign centre-backs flooding the V.League. A winger who is 1.65m tall and weighs 60kg cannot win duels against a centre-back who is 1.85m and 80kg. So coaches choose to bring that player inside, where he can use technique and agility instead of strength. That is a reasonable decision. But it carries a price. The price is that the traditional winger — the one who runs the line, the one who crosses, the one who creates the moments fans remember — is slowly vanishing from the V.League. Not because they are not good enough. But because there is no longer a place for them in the system. I remember Van Toan. In 2026, in the match between Sanna Khanh Hoa and Hoang Anh Gia Lai on matchday 14 of the V.League, I was a desk runner for an online sports channel in Nha Trang. I was utterly captivated by Van Toan's step-over on the away side. He did not score. But the inside touch of his boot pulled a whole silence out of the stadium. The editor cut all of my commentary and kept only the 1-1 scoreline. I did not argue. That night, I re-watched the footage four times and noted every expression of the fans in stand H — not when they celebrated, but when they held their breath. Van Toan is a traditional winger in the truest sense. He runs the line, he crosses, he creates silences. But Van Toan is also one of the rare players still holding that position in the V.League. The others are not. In youth academies, wingers are taught to cut inside from a very young age. They are taught that crossing is the last option, not the first. They are taught that keeping the ball and combining is the priority. And they are taught that a modern winger must be able to score, not only to assist. This sounds progressive. But it also means we are producing wingers who are all identical. No one runs the line. No one crosses. No one creates silences. There is another layer of cause here, rarely spoken of. Player agents are the biggest hidden cost of the V.League transfer market, and the noise they generate distorts how young players define their own position. A 19-year-old winger is told by his agent that only when he can score does he have transfer value. So he cuts inside, learns to shoot, and forgets how to cross. That skill is not priced in the market. Yet it is precisely what Vietnamese football lacks most. The counterintuitive point here is that the inverted winger is not the problem. The problem is that we are applying that model in haste, without fully understanding the physical and technical foundations of Vietnamese players. In Europe, inverted wingers such as Arjen Robben or Mohamed Salah have the build and strength to duel with full-backs. They can absorb contact, hold the ball, and create space. Vietnamese players cannot. When pushed inside, they lose their spatial advantage and become easy targets. Meanwhile, the traditional Vietnamese winger has an advantage no one mentions: patience. They know how to wait on the line, how to run into the space behind the full-back, and how to cross into the box. Those skills are not obsolete. They have simply been forgotten. I am not saying we should return to the football of the 2000s. I am saying we are discarding a valuable resource — traditional wingers — only because we want to imitate a model unsuited to our physicality. Vietnamese football once had outstanding wingers. Nguyen Van Quyet, Van Toan, Nguyen Quang Hai in the early years of their careers. They were not merely wingers. They were storytellers. And their story is now being rewritten by people who do not understand them. I do not know whether the traditional winger will return to the V.League. But I know that football is not measured only by goals and assists. It is also measured by silences — the seconds when fans hold their breath, waiting for something to happen. Number 14 does not run toward the goal. He runs toward those who still remember. And I am still sitting there, listening to the pitch breathe.