Four V.League Clubs Out of the National Cup at the First Hurdle: When a Ticket to the Next Round Is Priced in Costs

At minute 90+4 at Quy Nhon, Hoang Anh Gia Lai pulled one back from the penalty spot to make it 2-3 against Hung Yen. The goal only narrowed a deficit that had been settled in the 77th minute, when Hung Yen made it 3-1. Seconds after the final whistle, the club from the Central Highlands left the 2026-2027 National Cup at the qualifying round, on a pitch that was not theirs and against an opponent playing in the first division.

Earlier the same weekend, in Hai Phong, a striker who had joined Thep Can Tho only days before scored the only goal of the match in the first half. In Thanh Hoa, the hosts lost 0-2 to Becamex TP.HCM, a club freshly relegated and now targeting a return to the V.League.

Eight qualifying matches over two days. Four defeats for clubs currently playing in the V.League at the hands of first-division sides, three of them at home. Only Bac Ninh won, 3-2 away at Long An.

Four results, three home grounds

In Thanh Hoa, the hosts lost 0-2 to Becamex TP.HCM. The visitors' squad was in no way inferior to the hosts', and the way they played suggested relegation was being treated as an accident. No passage of that match forced anyone to consider a comeback.

In Quy Nhon, Hoang Anh Gia Lai lost 2-3 to Hung Yen. The Central Highlands club cannot play at Pleiku because the pitch is being re-laid to fix drainage after repeated flooding in heavy rain. Its temporary home sits more than two hundred kilometres from the club's base.

In Hai Phong, the hosts lost 0-1 to Thep Can Tho, a club just relocated from Quang Ninh to the Mekong Delta region and beaten on the opening day of the 2026-2027 first division.

Hong Linh Ha Tinh drew 0-0 with Phu Tho after 90 minutes, then lost 2-3 on penalties.

The invoice arrives after the whistle

For most V.League clubs, especially those without title ambitions, the National Cup is not the main arena. The deeper a run goes, the more it costs in travel and accommodation, the more squad rotation it forces, while the relegation fight is what determines whether a club survives. The qualifying round falls at the very start of the season, when squads are still being assembled and no points cushion has been banked, so prioritising the league is the obvious choice. That indifference opens the door for first-division sides, who carry fewer calculations and more hunger.

Thanh Hoa are the clearest case, and not because they chose to let go. The club from Thanh Hoa province only knew it still existed immediately before the 2026-2027 V.League kicked off, with a thin squad because there was not enough money to keep its key players or buy new ones. Before facing Becamex TP.HCM, it also had a bill to handle: FIFA ordered payment of more than USD 305,000, roughly VND 8 billion, to striker Rimario Gordon after the Jamaican player filed a claim. If the matter is not resolved within 45 days of receiving the notice on 16 September 2026, Thanh Hoa will be banned from registering new players for three transfer windows.

The complication is that the debt arose under the previous sponsor's tenure, while the club has since been transferred to a new sponsor. For a club counting every month, three locked transfer windows is a far heavier sanction than a cup defeat. A 0-2 loss at home, placed next to that story, is no longer a technical matter.

A home ground outside the map

Hoang Anh Gia Lai entered the season with two straight V.League defeats and a squad thinner than last year's. Against a hungry Hung Yen, the side coached by Le Quang Trai lost quickly, exactly as the balance of resources suggested. The story is not the scoreline but the fact that the match had no home ground in any real sense.

Drawing on my experience watching matches across Vietnamese and European leagues, I spent most of 2026 comparing 890 pre-pandemic matches with 278 played in empty stadiums. Home advantage fell by 61 per cent. That drop partly explains why a club forced out of Pleiku, playing in Quy Nhon, stripped of familiar noise and short travel routines, breaks far more easily than an ordinary defeat would suggest. Without spectators, a home ground is only an address on a map.

Watching the Hung Yen - Hoang Anh Gia Lai footage a second time, I noticed the visitors winning most of the second balls in central midfield during the first 20 minutes of the second half, exactly when the hosts should have raised the tempo after falling behind. The tempo never came. Hung Yen simply held their shape, waited, and finished the tie from a set piece.

A market of hope

Thep Can Tho show a different route. The club had just moved, had just lost its opening first-division match, and immediately signed a striker. Days later, Thaileon scored the only goal of the game in Hai Phong. The transfer market is where clubs buy and sell supporters' hope with the owner's money, and in small deals that investment is sometimes repaid with a single finish.

Hai Phong and Hong Linh Ha Tinh opened the 2026-2027 V.League with one win and one loss each. Their early cup exits will not disturb their season plans, and both coaching staffs certainly knew that when they picked their line-ups. For Hong Linh Ha Tinh, a 0-0 draw followed by a shoot-out defeat was also the cheapest possible way to go out.

Fairy tales consumed and discarded

First-division wins get told as fairy tales, and within days they are over. No extra money flows to Becamex TP.HCM, Hung Yen, Thep Can Tho or Phu Tho for knocking out a V.League club. There is no bye, no change in broadcasting revenue distribution, no mechanism to offset travel costs for sides that must go far in later rounds. The excitement of neutral fans is a resource that gets mined and then abandoned.

The same is happening, even more starkly, in women's football. There the prize money is smaller, the stands emptier, travel still costs real money, and the number of clubs able to sustain a cup run is smaller still. A pitch has no gender, but the gaze directed at women on a pitch does. Same arithmetic, smaller denominator.

Last weekend's results were never evidence that first-division football has grown stronger. They show a competition where progressing costs more than it returns, and a system with no mechanism to pay the winners what they are owed. It would be too easy to blame a few unambitious coaches; every club is calculating correctly, only within a structure that does not reward going far.

What to watch

Thanh Hoa's 45-day deadline expires in early November 2026. If the club cannot settle the Rimario Gordon debt, it enters the decisive phase of the relegation fight with its hands tied for three transfer windows. A club at the bottom of the table that cannot sign anyone is a club waiting to be eliminated.

As for the National Cup, everything still sits at the qualifying round. A missed shot can teach us more than a trophy, if we are willing to look at our own gaps. Eight matches and four defeats are not the surprise; what should worry us is that after this tournament, nobody is obliged to fix the structure that produced them.