Nguyen Xuan Son and the Crack in Our Expectations

When the stretcher left My Dinh Stadium during the second-leg final of the 2026 AFF Cup, I did not see an injury. I saw a symbol being erected, and at that moment the paint of expectation began to crack. It took me thirty years to understand that the golden boy does not rise; the paint of our expectation begins to crack. Nguyen Xuan Son left the pitch with seven goals, with the Southeast Asian championship trophy, with an entire nation singing. In the stands, fans wept, chanted his name, held up shirts printed with the number 12. But I, an old man who sat in a Moscow studio in 2026 and watched Germany collapse because they believed they were invincible, saw a different fear. We had just handed our entire dream to one pair of legs, and that pair of legs had just broken. That was not an accident. It was a bloody reminder of the cost of building a temple on a single pillar. The press called Son a “national hero”, a “secret weapon” of Vietnamese football. In every match of the AFF Cup, people waited for a burst of speed, a curling shot, a piece of skill only he had. He did not just score; he was the destination of every pass, the place where the whole team unloaded its creative responsibility. When the ball reached his feet, the stadium fell silent for a fraction of a second — the silence of worship. But football is not a religion, and gods on the pitch always have a day of departure, whether by stretcher or by transfer decision. The numbers of the tournament showed Son’s influence with brutal clarity: seven goals, more than any other player at the 2026 AFF Cup, and direct involvement in nearly one-third of the team’s goals. That created an optical illusion: without Son, what would Vietnam look like? Perhaps we had forgotten that football is a game of eleven, and that before Son arrived, this team had won Southeast Asia twice, with different people, with a different style. But the crowd’s memory is short, and the media always needs a face to carry its dreams. The dependence on Son was not only tactical. It was psychological. When a team believes it has a “hero”, the other players start running less, thinking less, and passing to him more. They shed responsibility, and that wears down the collective instinct. I saw this at the 2026 World Cup, when the Germans believed they only needed one moment to turn the game — and they were eliminated by a Korean collective with no stars, but with eleven hearts beating as one. Before Son’s injury, every Vietnam attack usually went through one point: a long pass from the centre-back to the striker, letting Son battle the opposing defender, hold the ball and wait for the satellites to arrive. That system worked because Son had the physique and technique to do it. But it was also a confession: our midfield lacked the creativity to break down packed defences, and our full-backs lacked the speed to create real threat. Vietnamese football does not lack technical players — but they were being eroded by a style that put all faith in one man. That is why I said the crack is bigger than the injury. I have witnessed many heroes. Le Cong Vinh scored against Thailand in the 2026 AFF Cup final and the whole stadium exploded. Nguyen Quang Hai lifted the golden trophy at My Dinh in 2026. And I have watched how each of them left — not with a goodbye, but with a silence, when the media found a new hero to worship. That is not ingratitude; it is the nature of collective memory. We do not remember what they did for the team; we remember how we felt when they did it. Now, as Son recovers from surgery on a broken bone, people begin asking the existential question: can Vietnam survive without him? That is the wrong question. The right question is: are we willing to let the team learn to stand on its own feet? An empty stadium does not take away the shouting; it only lets us hear more clearly the sigh from the coaching bench. That sigh, at this moment, is echoing from the team’s training centre, where assistants must re-teach the coordination drills that used to be solved by simply passing to Son. I could be wrong. Completely wrong. Because there are players whose presence changes the entire dynamic of a team — Messi at Argentina, Ronaldo at Portugal, and perhaps Son at Vietnam. But even Argentina, once mocked for “depending on Messi”, won the 2026 World Cup when Messi played for the collective, and when young players Dared to take responsibility. Nobody asked “Can Argentina win without Messi?” They asked “How can Argentina win, with Messi or without?” And that is the difference between a team and a cult of worshippers. The 2027 Asian Cup qualifiers still have crucial matchdays ahead, and Son is almost certain to miss at least the first few games upon his return. This is a historic opportunity — a chance to prove that we can grow without leaning on him. Head coach Kim Sang-sik has said he wants to build a collective style. Now is the time for him to prove it, not with words, but with results. There is no great prophecy, only an old man cynical enough to see the crack the crowd deliberately ignores. I see the deepest crack not in Son’s shinbone, but in the way we think about the national team. That crack existed long before he came to Vietnam. It is the disease of dreamers: we always seek someone to worship, and then blame them for not being able to fly. We come to the stadium to witness victory, but I only want to stay behind to read the face of a hero questioning himself. Son will return, surely, because he is still young, still hungry, and still owes the fans a full performance. But when he returns, I hope the team is no longer waiting for a miracle. I hope they have stood on their own feet, so that when Son returns, he is no longer the carrier, but part of something larger. And if that happens, even without a trophy this year, Vietnamese football will still win — because they have learned the most expensive lesson of maturity: no one is irreplaceable, but a collective can always be reborn.