Behind the 2026 AFF Cup Title: The Pulse of Vietnam's National Team and the Void Left by Nguyen Xuan Son

On January 5, 2026, at My Dinh Stadium. I stood in the technical-area corridor — the place where beat reporters are usually pushed to the margins, far from the roar, close to the breathing. The final whistle sounded. 3-2, 5-3 on aggregate. But what I remember is not the goals. It is the moment Nguyen Xuan Son lay on a stretcher in Bangkok two days earlier, and the look in his teammates' eyes as they walked into the second leg without him. In the dressing room afterwards, nobody shouted. They just sat there, breathing. A team crowned champions of Southeast Asia for the third time in its history, after 2026 and 2026, yet the faces carried no complete joy — only the relief of people who had just walked through a storm. A season opens from a heartbeat in the press room, before the opening whistle. And that heartbeat, for Vietnam's national team, has skipped many times over the past eighteen months. To understand this title, we must go back to March 2026. That was when the Vietnam Football Federation terminated Philippe Troussier's contract, after two consecutive defeats to Indonesia in the 2026 World Cup qualifiers. Troussier arrived with an ambitious possession philosophy, but he had no time and, more importantly, not enough suitable players to realise it. The team played slowly, passed a lot, and lost direction in the final third. In May 2026, Kim Sang-sik was appointed. The Korean coach arrived with an almost opposite philosophy: few touches, fast transitions, directness, and physical duels. He did not try to build a castle from nothing. He chose to assemble what was already there — and to find one extra piece nobody expected. That piece was Nguyen Xuan Son, born Rafaelson Bezerra Fernandes, a Brazilian-born striker who had played in the V.League for years and obtained Vietnamese citizenship in late 2026. His arrival was not merely the story of a signing. It was the answer to Vietnamese football's biggest problem for a decade: the absence of a genuine centre-forward, someone who could hold the ball, link play, and finish inside the box. The V.League context matters too. In recent seasons, leading clubs such as Thep Xanh Nam Dinh and Cong An Ha Noi have spent heavily on foreign strikers. Domestic centre-forwards are routinely benched or pushed wide. This creates a paradox: the national team lacks strikers, while the national league denies those very strikers real opportunities. Looking at the tournament statistics, Nguyen Xuan Son scored in almost every match. He was the top scorer. But if we look only at goals, we miss something more important: how he changed the attacking structure of the whole team. Before Xuan Son, Vietnam attacked mainly down the flanks, relying on the pace of wide players. The ball would go wide, then be crossed in — but there was nobody strong enough to contest it in the box. The team's chance-conversion rate was systematically low. With Xuan Son on the pitch, everything shifted axis. He was not only the finisher. He was the player who held the ball up top, dragged opposing centre-backs out of position, and opened space for midfielders arriving from the second line. That is why Nguyen Hoang Duc and Nguyen Tien Linh suddenly had far more room. Hoang Duc, operating in central midfield, could push higher because he no longer had to worry about holding the ball up top. Tien Linh, often criticised for his link-up play, became effective alongside a target man. The key point is not Xuan Son's goal tally, but the vertical spine he created that made horizontal defending impossible for opponents. Alongside this, Kim Sang-sik's defence played with a different discipline. A back three was frequently used to compensate for the advanced full-backs. Nguyen Thanh Chung and his defensive partners kept short distances between lines, limiting gaps. Goalkeeper Dinh Trieu, once doubted for his distribution, became a stable link in building from the back. Interestingly, Vietnam did not press high continuously. They chose selective pressing — waiting for opponents to pass into a trap, then suddenly swarming. Vietnam's PPDA, the number of passes allowed per defensive action, was not among the lowest in the tournament, meaning they did not press frantically. But when they pressed, it was organised and targeted. My own match-watching at the group stage revealed a clear pattern: Vietnam accepted conceding territory in the first half, controlled the tempo, then accelerated in the second half when opponents tired. That is how they beat many rivals, and how they reached the final. Gegenpressing is not a strange wind; it is a wind ripened from quiet seasons of running. For this team, that wind was ripened in training sessions in Nha Trang and Ha Noi, where Kim Sang-sik made players rehearse transition situations hundreds of times. Set pieces deserve a mention. Vietnam scored from corners and free kicks in many matches. This was not luck. It was the result of systematic training. In Southeast Asian football, where box defending is often imperfect, set pieces are a vital weapon. Kim Sang-sik understood that, and exploited it deliberately. The first leg of the final took place on January 2, 2026, in Bangkok. Vietnam won 2-1. But the victory came with a terrible price: Nguyen Xuan Son suffered a fracture, left the pitch on a stretcher, and his tournament ended right there. This was the moment a team's character was tested. Losing the number-one striker, losing the player who held the ball up top, losing the hub of every attacking move. Many feared Vietnam would collapse in the second leg. They did not. And the reason lay in a detail few noticed: throughout the tournament, Kim Sang-sik rotated deliberately. He did not depend on a fixed eleven. Players such as Doan Ngoc Tan, Nguyen Thanh Chung, and other bench options had all logged real minutes. When Xuan Son broke his leg, the team did not face an entirely new void. The second leg on January 5 at My Dinh: Vietnam won 3-2. Aggregate 5-3. The third title in history. I remember that night. The air at My Dinh was heavy as lead. When Vietnam took the lead, the stands burst open. When Thailand equalised, the silence was deep enough to hear players calling to each other. And when the final whistle blew, I did not look at the goalscorers. I looked at the young players on the bench, clapping while their eyes were still dazed. There is a reading of this title that the media rarely mentions: it may be masking Vietnamese football's structural problems rather than solving them. First, the victory depended heavily on one naturalised player. There is nothing wrong with that legally or ethically — many nations do the same. But it raises questions about the youth development system. Without Xuan Son, would Vietnam have won? The honest answer is: very hard. For years, Vietnamese football has produced many fine midfielders and defenders, but almost no genuine centre-forward. This is a systemic gap, and naturalising a striker is a stopgap, not a root solution. Second, opponents in Southeast Asia are relatively weakening. Thailand is in transition; Indonesia is building a large naturalised squad but is not yet cohesive. Winning Southeast Asia is no longer a sufficient yardstick for the team's true continental strength. In the 2026 World Cup qualifiers, Vietnam still has much work to do. Opponents such as Iraq, or Indonesia with its naturalised squad, will not allow the team to concede territory and then accelerate. Third, and this is what I observe from the V.League itself: clubs still depend far too much on foreign strikers. Domestic centre-forwards rarely get regular starting opportunities. If the V.League cannot produce strikers, the national team will forever seek solutions from outside. Fans remember goals; I remember the eyes of a substitute when the whistle blows. On that My Dinh night, young players sat on the bench, clapping, but in their eyes was a question: when will it be my turn? I have covered eight World Cups, eight Olympic Games, and many editions of the Giro d'Italia and Tour de France. I learned one thing: the summit is not a destination, but the starting point of a harder question. Russia 2026 was so cold that I remembered every breath of the stands for four years afterwards. And I remember, in 2026, when Vietnam's U23 team trained in Russia, I saw Bui Tien Dung — then just 21 — sitting quietly in a corner of the training pitch after a friendly defeat, packing his gloves by hand and wiping the goal frame clean. Behind the glory of those televised saves lay a silent pressure that no statistic could capture. The 2026 title is the same. Behind the trophy are unanswered questions. The 2026 AFF Cup title gives Kim Sang-sik time and credibility. But time is what Vietnamese football never has enough of. Ahead lies the 2026 World Cup qualifiers, where every point is precious. The biggest question is not how to celebrate, but how to sustain. How, when Nguyen Xuan Son returns — if he returns in form — the team does not slide back into total dependence on him. How the young generation I saw in Da Nang in 2026 gets a real chance. In 2026, when the pandemic froze every league, I stayed in Da Nang, reporting on SHB Da Nang during the empty days of Chi Lang Stadium. Coach Le Huynh Duc called and asked me to record the diaries of eleven young players stranded at the training centre. I sat quietly in the corridor from six in the morning until night. Those young men — where are they now? An empty stadium does not stop the ball rolling; it only makes the applause lag one beat behind the heart. But at My Dinh on the night of January 5, the stadium was not empty. And that applause — though late — still rang out. What I want to see next is not another trophy, but a domestic centre-forward scoring fifteen goals in the V.League next season. If that happens, Vietnamese football will no longer have to rely on pieces from outside to complete its own picture. And then, the team's heartbeat will pump with its own blood.