The VFF Finance Vice-Chairmanship Is the Real Seat of Power for the 2027-2031 Term

On the morning of October 21, I sat in my small Osaka apartment, opened the list of candidates for the Vietnam Football Federation leadership for the 2027-2031 term, and laughed out loud enough that the neighbour's cat jumped off the balcony. Three candidates for Chairman. Eight for Vice Chairman. Thirty-one for the Executive Committee. The domestic press pointed every lens at the Chairman race, where Trần Quốc Tuấn stands before two new names. After fifty-two years of watching people divide up seats, I have learned one thing: the seat that gets mentioned most is almost never the seat with real power.

Inside the VFF machinery, real power sits in the Vice Chairman post responsible for finance and sponsorship. That is where broadcasting contracts are decided, where national-team budgets take shape, and where it is settled which clubs benefit from the federation's cash flow. This term, that seat has exactly two candidates: Nguyễn Xuân Vũ, who currently holds it, and Nguyễn Đức Thụy, a construction and banking businessman who has just walked onto the pitch.

So you do not get lost in the names, let me rebuild the board. The VFF has 57 member organisations, and they are the real electorate. They cast secret ballots for the Chairman and the Vice Chairmen. The Executive Committee is larger: 31 candidates, of whom 12 come from V.League clubs, 5 from the First Division, 1 from the Second Division. Eighteen of thirty-one are club-linked, and that ratio says more than any campaign speech.

One rule deserves attention: each person may stand for only one position. The current list breaches the spirit of that rule legally. Trần Quốc Tuấn is nominated for both Chairman and the professional-affairs Vice Chairman post. Nguyễn Xuân Vũ appears in three places: Chairman, finance Vice Chairman, communications Vice Chairman. One man, three doors. It breaks no rule, but it tells you he is not certain where he wins.

The list is not final. As of October 21, some member organisations had not yet submitted nomination documents. Two ministries will vet the personnel before the list is closed. The congress is expected in late December 2026 or January 2027. And here is where I want you to pause: an incomplete list means the numbers three, eight and thirty-one are only provisional.

The Chairman seat first. Trần Quốc Tuấn was born in 2026, has held office for five years, and sits on the AFF Competitions Committee, the AFC and FIFA. That is a real asset, not a wall plaque. A new chairman would forfeit the voice Tuấn has accumulated over years.

Nguyễn Đức Thụy was born in 2026, a construction and banking businessman. He was attached to Sài Gòn Xuân Thành from 2026 to 2026, a club later dissolved. From 2026 he arrived at Ninh Bình. At the start of the 2026-2026 season, he transferred the Ninh Bình club chairmanship to his daughter Nguyễn Ngọc Mỹ Anh. This is the most important detail that most reports skipped. Handing club ownership to a family member before entering a federation seat is the familiar clearing move: separating personal interests from public office before anyone can raise the question. Nobody does that unless they believe a seat is coming.

Nguyễn Xuân Vũ was born in 2026, a long-serving bank board member and concurrently Chairman of the Vietnam Table Tennis Federation. A multi-sport profile, rare inside a football federation. Vũ represents relationship capital.

The real race, therefore, is relationship capital against cash capital. Over the next four years, what Vietnamese football needs more is not a man who knows everyone, but a man who can sign contracts.

The professional-affairs Vice Chairman seat is where it is decided who picks the national-team coach, the youth-development philosophy, and even competition formats. Three candidates: Trần Anh Tú, Trần Quốc Tuấn, Trần Huy Đức. Tuấn nominating himself for this seat while contesting the chairmanship is a defensive move: if he loses the top job, he still has a route to controlling technical direction. Modern football is suffocating under people so afraid of losing that they forget how to win, and here the defending is not on the grass, it is on the ballot.

Then there is structure. Trần Anh Tú holds the VFF professional-affairs Vice Chairman post and concurrently chairs the board of VPF, the entity running the professional leagues. One man sits at the rule-writing table and at the tournament-organising table. In any European federation that structure would be challenged in the first session. In Vietnam it survives so quietly that nobody treats it as an issue.

And here is what convinces me this term will be remembered for money rather than football: five Vice Chairman candidates come from business backgrounds. Vũ Quốc Khánh, Nguyễn Trung Kiên, Lê Văn Thành, Trần Anh Tú, and Thụy. Nguyễn Trung Kiên, who holds the finance seat, is re-nominated, meaning the current sponsorship model stays. A federation whose leadership is almost entirely businessmen will optimise revenue very well, and will tend to rank technical development second. That is not evil. It is a choice, and fans should know what is being chosen on their behalf.

The generational gap is a real signal: 2026, 2026, 2026. Ten years across three names. If the electorate wants renewal, Vũ is the youngest option. If it wants stability plus capital, Thụy is the middle road. And if it wants to keep the voice at AFF, AFC and FIFA, Tuấn is the only one who has it.

Two women appear on the Executive Committee slate: Nguyễn Thị Mỹ Dung, a member of the FIFA Disciplinary Committee, and Bùi Thị Hiền Lương. Dung's profile is a rare bright spot of international competence, the kind Vietnamese football usually uses for photographs rather than decisions.

Now the part where I might be wrong, and I always keep this part for myself before you do it for me.

What I might have wrong is how the electorate actually votes. Vietnamese football elects leaders through blocs, not through media narratives. 57 member organisations, mostly provincial federations and clubs. They vote on relationships, on promises about facilities, on a slot to host a youth tournament, not on a speech about vision. I sit in Osaka, read the papers, and may be overrating my own analysis while the outcome is settled over dinners before the congress.

I may also be wrong to place Thụy among the heavyweights. The original report says he enjoys considerable confidence without citing a single source, without a delegate count, without a list of supporters. That is the writer's opinion, not data. I nearly used it as evidence, and that is precisely the trap I keep reminding myself to avoid: verify, then light the fuse.

And I may be wrong to say the finance seat matters more than the chairmanship. In a federation where the Chairman convenes meetings, assigns portfolios and speaks for the body, formal power still has real value. I declared war on defensive football in 2026 and nobody has yet been brave enough to accept. Still, I have to admit: sometimes people need a figurehead more than they need a safe.

My prediction, for you to hold me to: Trần Quốc Tuấn will not win the chairmanship comfortably, but he will keep a seat in the leadership. The finance Vice Chairman race will be the tightest of all. And the final list will differ from the list of October 21.

At 68, I do not need to chase trends; I create them and leave them behind. But I still want to ask you something I cannot answer myself: when Vietnamese football has four more years to choose between a man who knows how to open doors and a man with money to build houses, who do you want in the seat nobody looks at?