V.League: Quantity or Quality? — When Vietnamese Football Learns to Count by Faith

There is a number that does not appear in any V.League statistical table: the number of clubs that have left the league in silence. Quang Nam is the most recent name. They survived relegation, then disappeared. No farewell match, no wreath, only a brief announcement about the budget. I still keep the habit of recording such moments in my small notebook — not because I like sadness, but because I believe the pitch never lies, we are simply not slow enough to listen.

When VFF and VPF announced the roadmap to expand V.League to 16 and then 18 clubs by 2027, no one cried in the meeting room. But within those four walls, one question was forgotten: are we expanding a league, or multiplying its cracks?

In Thường Châu in 2026, I stayed up all night watching U23 Vietnam play Iraq in a penalty shootout, and wrote about Công Phượng's tears in the minus 15-degree snow. That article taught me something I have carried for ten years: the emotion of a nation is not born from the scoreline, but from what keeps people awake. The 16-18 club roadmap is also keeping many people awake. But unlike Thường Châu, this time they are not awake from joy.

Context: A league counting with someone else's numbers

Before going into the story, the comparison numbers need to be put on the table. Japan operates J1 League with 20 clubs. South Korea has only 12 teams in K League 1 but still produces a 38-round season thanks to a split format (33 regular rounds + championship/relegation playoffs). Thailand has 16 teams for 30 rounds. Indonesia runs 18 teams, Malaysia 12, Singapore 8.

Many or few clubs does not determine league quality. Looking at how South Korea manages with 12 teams while still delivering 38 matches per season, one can see: match volume can be engineered through format design, not necessarily by adding teams. This is an option that V.League's expansion roadmap does not seem to consider, even though it is cheaper and less risky in terms of licensing.

With the current 14 clubs, V.League produces 26 double round-robin rounds. Including the National Cup, a club plays about 30-33 matches per season. Expanding to 16 teams → 30 rounds, about 34-37 matches. To 18 teams → 34 rounds, about 38-41 matches. In theory, that number is enough to give fans four more weekend rounds per season.

But theory does not play football. Those who play football are the players who have to run on the pitch, and the real question is: who will run?

Analysis: Four new teams, and four gaps not yet filled

From the stands, I learned to count time by breaths, not by minutes and seconds. And when following the expansion story, I also learned to count clubs by solvency, not by name.

When expanding from 14 to 18 clubs, the league needs four more qualified teams. Where will those four come from? By natural law, they will come from the First Division — where budgets, facilities and sports medicine are one tier thinner than V.League. And when they step up, they will bring older problems, not newer solutions.

I still remember the feeling in 2026, standing under the empty Hòa Xuân stadium, hearing shoes touch the grass like the creaking of a childhood door. That day SHB Đà Nẵng lost 0-1 to Hanoi, and 25,000 empty seats did not applaud. The article I sent out was read by few, but I learned that emptiness is a character with its own voice. The emptiness in club budgets is the same. It is not silent. It just waits until someone accidentally steps on it.

V.League currently has 14 clubs, and at least 3-4 of them survive on subsidies. Thanh Hóa has nearly collapsed many times, rescued by local authorities. Sông Lam Nghệ An and Hải Phòng also struggle to operate without provincial budgets. Hoàng Anh Gia Lai — the club with Vietnam's best academy — has received 2,000 billion VND from one individual over 20 years, and still went through a decade of decline. The lesson here is not only money, but that a single-source funding model that cannot generate returns can only buy survival, not development.

If the figure of 2,000 billion VND is placed against an exchange rate of about 25,000 VND/USD, that is about 76-80 million USD over 20 years — equivalent to 3.8-4.0 million USD/year. Just enough to sustain a mid-table V.League club. A replicable model, but not a scalable one. And a league cannot grow by replicating models that cannot be scaled.

There is a notable point about licensing: in 2026, two clubs were penalized for failing licensing standards. By 2026, two other clubs received only conditional licenses. That means among the current 14 teams, about 10-15% are not fully compliant. If expanded to 18 teams at a similar rate, the league would have 2-3 more non-compliant clubs. At that point, the licensing system will have to choose: either become ineffective, or force relegation by administrative decision.

The Quang Nam story is the clearest proof. They survived relegation, then left the league due to budget. A club leaving mid-season not only loses its own points, but distorts the entire standings, reduces broadcast contract value, and destroys sponsor confidence. That is a price no statistical table can record.

As for youth development, this is a point I believe the expansion roadmap undervalues. Four new clubs mean about 100-120 additional first-team places, and about 500-700 minutes of playing time per round for young players. For a league where teams often prioritize foreign players, this is the strongest argument for expansion. But that argument only holds if the quality of training is deep enough to fill those four places. If not, what is called opportunity will become forced ripening.

Contrarian Angle: What we remember about Vietnamese football

People remember the name of the scorer, but I remember his run ten seconds before. And when looking at the V.League expansion story, I remember something else: the moments we do not see.

From the stands, we count shots, passes, points. But we rarely count the number of clubs that cannot pay salaries on time, the number of players who have to move to another team because their old team dissolved, and the number of coaches replaced mid-season for reasons unrelated to expertise.

The counterintuitive point here is: V.League's problem is not a lack of teams, but a lack of teams with sufficient solvency.

This may sound simple, but it completely changes how we view the expansion roadmap. If we believe that more teams will create more matches, and more matches will create higher quality, then we are assuming quality is an automatic consequence of quantity. V.League history does not support that assumption. From 2026 to now, the story of cross-ownership and conflicts of interest between club owners remains unresolved. A league with 14 teams that still has transparency issues will not automatically become more transparent with 18 teams. It will just have four more places to hide problems.

From the stands, I learned to count time by breaths, not by minutes and seconds. And I also learned that: when silent, I hear an entire generation waiting for something crazy. That generation is not waiting for more teams. They are waiting for a league they can trust.

There is a thought-provoking detail: among the leagues used for comparison, South Korea has only 12 teams but still enough for 38 matches thanks to a split format. Thailand has 16 teams but only 30 rounds. Indonesia has 18 teams but league quality does not match its scale. This shows that the number of teams is not the decisive variable for league quality. The decisive variables are format design capability, financial governance and player development.

So why is the expansion roadmap prioritized over other options? Perhaps because expansion creates more matches for broadcast rights, more clubs for voting power within VPF, and more political reasons than professional ones. I have no evidence to assert this, but my experience following matches tells me: when a decision is made without accompanying quality KPIs, its motive is usually not quality.

Takeaway: The heart still beats, even when the stands no longer applaud

The glory of the loser is a light that only those who stay can pick up. And in the V.League expansion story, those who stay are not the owners, nor the officials. Those who stay are the young players who just signed their first professional contracts, the coaches teaching football to children in Quang Nam, the fans who still buy tickets even knowing their team may not exist next season.

Every contract is a promise, every promise is a sadness that may happen. The 16-18 club roadmap is also a promise. But a promise only has value when the promiser is capable of keeping it. And based on what Vietnamese football has said over the past ten years, I am not sure we are ready to keep this promise.

The question is not how many teams V.League should have. The question is: do we want a league that fans can trust, or a league that fans must count by faith?

The heart still beats, even when the stands no longer applaud. But if the stands remain empty forever, one day, the heart will also learn to be silent.