Without Xuan Son, Vietnam's Attack Is Clearly Weaker: But the Real Story Does Not End with One Name

I begin this article not with a goal, but from the bench where people first listen. There are stories that do not begin with a goal, but from the bench where people first listen. In the longest night, I learned to hear the breath of an empty stand. That night at the stadium in Bandung, Indonesia, I sat in front of a screen, not in the stands. But I could still hear the breath of a team losing its way. That breath did not come from fans wearing red shirts with a yellow star. It came from the players on the pitch — men running, passing, dribbling back and forth in vain, as if looking for something that was no longer there. They were looking for a number nine. They were looking for a figure listed in the injury report: Nguyen Xuan Son. I remember another night, eight years ago, at the 29th SEA Games in Malaysia. I was a young reporter sent by my newsroom to cover the women's football team while my male colleagues followed the U22 squad. In the final against Thailand, I misspelled Huynh Nhu's name as "Hoang Nhu" on air in the first half. By the 61st minute, when she scored the opening goal, I discovered the error and corrected it. Vietnam won 2-1 with a decisive goal from Nguyen Thi Tuyet Dung in the 89th minute. That match taught me why the women's players cried so much. And from then on, I learned that a person's name is more than letters. It is a sign that we acknowledge their presence. When we misspell a name, or when we do not mention a person at all, that says a great deal about how we see the world. On the third night in Bandung, there was a young player wearing shirt number 22 for Vietnam. His name is Dinh Bac. No one misspelled his name, because almost no one mentioned him as a person. He was mentioned as a position: "the reluctant number nine," "Xuan Son's replacement," "the only spearhead in attack." Football expert Doan Minh Xuong, in an analysis published by Tuoi Tre newspaper, delivered a sentence that could summarize the whole night: "Without Xuan Son, Vietnam's attack is clearly much weaker." That sentence is true. But it is only partly true. And that unspoken part is where I want to begin this story. The match took place in Group B of the Southeast Asian championship — the ASEAN Cup — at a neutral venue in Bandung. It was Vietnam's second match of the tournament. Previously, Kim Sang Sik's men had beaten the Philippines 1-0 in their opener. Xuan Son, the Brazilian-born naturalized striker, was injured in that first match and could not play. In fact, Vietnam's losses that night went beyond Xuan Son. According to expert Doan Minh Xuong, Vietnam entered the match with too many problems: no full squad, most players not in optimal physical condition, and key figures like Nguyen Hoang Duc just returning from injury. These problems, added together, formed a picture in which the absence of a spearhead striker became the straw that broke the camel's back. One could say Thailand entered the match with nearly their strongest squad. They were not missing anyone. Their midfield was so deep that they could substitute freely without lowering quality. That created a stark contrast with Vietnam's midfield — a thin midfield so depleted that Kim Sang Sik had to pull left-back Cao Quang Vinh into central midfield at one point in the match. A team forced to use a full-back to patch the central lane is usually not a team playing proactive football. It is a team fighting fires. But before we discuss how Vietnam fought the fire, we must discuss the fire itself. The fire was set early by Thailand with a clear plan. They did not come to Bandung to play possession football against Vietnam. They came to wait, to concede the ball, to set up a disciplined low block in front of their box, and to wait for the moment Vietnam lost patience. It was a man-to-man plan typical of wily, pragmatic teams: concede the ball, maintain compactness, neutralize every line-breaking pass, then punish on the counter. Thailand's most important tactical detail that night was not in their defense. It was in a position the Thais call the false nine — a forward who does not really play like a forward, but constantly drops into midfield to build play. The man assigned this role was Chanathip Songkrasin — a small, technically gifted player long regarded as the creative heart of Thai football for a decade. When Chanathip played false nine, Vietnam's defense did not know whom to mark: if a center-back followed him, space opened behind for Thailand's wingers to exploit; if the center-back stayed put, Chanathip would have too much time and space to receive between the lines and deliver lethal passes. That ambiguity left Vietnam's central midfielders in a state of hesitation. They did not know whether to step in or drop off, press or retreat. And in that hesitation, they left space just outside the box. That space was punished in a moment that, on replay, invites endless debate about the randomness of football. Sarach Yooyen, a Thai defensive midfielder, received the ball more than 25 meters from Vietnam's goal. No one closed him down. He leaned back, swung his leg, and the ball arrowed into the far corner. The Vietnamese goalkeeper dived full stretch but could not touch it. The score became 1-0 to Thailand. It was a long-range shot — one of the lowest-probability actions in modern football. But it was not pure luck. It was the consequence of a chain of positional miss-steps by Vietnam's midfield, decisions rooted in tactical confusion before an endlessly drifting Chanathip. After conceding, things became harder for Vietnam. Not because they played worse. In fact, they controlled more possession, passed more, pushed their line higher. But football is not measured by touches. Football is measured by how many times you put the ball in the opponent's net. And that night, Vietnam had many touches but almost no clear chance — at least until the ball found the feet of a man named Tai Loc. Late in the first half or early in the second, Tai Loc put the ball in Thailand's net. Shouts erupted, Vietnamese players celebrated in release, but then the referee received a signal from the VAR room. Offside. The goal was disallowed. That was one of the harshest moments of the match — and one of the most telling. When a team cannot create sustained pressure and decisive passes in the penalty area, every goal becomes fragile, easily strangled by a raised flag or a signal from the VAR room. That disallowed goal was not bad luck. It was the product of an attack not sharp enough, not deep enough, not intelligent enough in its off-ball movement inside the box. Let me pause here to talk about what I call the shadow of a number nine. In modern football, a center-forward is not simply a goalscorer. He is the focal point, the one who receives the ball with his back to goal, who holds it while teammates push up, who creates space for attacking midfielders by occupying and pulling central defenders. When Rafaelson — now Nguyen Xuan Son — wears the Vietnam shirt, he brings a weapon Vietnamese football has rarely possessed: a true center-forward with physique, power, the ability to absorb contact, and above all the confidence of a player who has competed in Europe. Without him, Vietnam did not just lose a scorer. They lost a whole structure. They lost a destination for passes, a reference point for combinations, and a constant threat that forced opposing defenses to shrink. Anyone watching that night could easily see this. When a Vietnamese player received the ball in midfield, he would lift his head and find no destination. There was no number nine running in behind. There was no number nine holding off a defender, controlling the ball on his chest, turning to shoot. There were only sideways passes, backward passes, and then a desperate shot from outside the box. That is what people call sterile domination — controlling the ball merely to control it, not to threaten. Expert Doan Minh Xuong correctly named the disease: "much possession but low attacking efficiency." What he did not say — or did not yet say — is why that disease occurred. Look at Vietnam's passing map that night. The ball circulated mostly in the middle and defensive thirds. Long balls over the top came from center-backs, but with no clear target. Short passes through the central lane were broken by Thailand's low block. Crosses from full-backs became meaningless with no one in the box to meet them. And long-range shots — attempts from outside the area — became the last resort, a desperate option. Possession stats might have shown Vietnam dominating, but possession never scores goals. Goals come from combinations in the box, from one-touch moves, from intelligent off-ball runs, from passes that deliver the ball into dangerous zones. All of that, that night, Vietnam almost never had. This brings me to a more uncomfortable question. The question is not "How much weaker is Vietnam without Xuan Son?" but "Why did a national team allow itself to become so dependent on one player?" In modern football, every major team builds its play on a system, not on individuals. A good system makes average players play better and can compensate for the loss of a star. In Vietnam, by contrast, the system seems built around one star to the point where his disappearance collapses the entire structure. We can call this deliberate dependency, or we can call it tactical incapacity on the part of the staff to build a Plan B. Consider a scenario: if Xuan Son cannot play in a semifinal or a final, can Vietnam confidently face Thailand — or any major opponent? The night in Bandung answered that question decisively: no. But the more worrying answer lies in how the team handled the situation on the pitch. When Xuan Son was absent, Kim Sang Sik tried several options, but all fell short. Deploying Dinh Bac — a young player with technique but without the physique and hold-up ability of a center-forward — at the highest attacking position was a personnel mismatch. Dinh Bac is not a center-forward. He is a winger, a wide forward with good dribbling and finishing, but not a man who can stand with his back to goal and battle tall center-backs. Giving him that role is like giving a small key to a large lock. And when he cannot turn the lock, people blame the key. Dinh Bac's story reminds me of many other young players in Vietnamese football — people placed in roles they were never trained for, people expected to become something they are not, people burned out before they could mature. I have seen this in women's football, in youth tournaments, in regional matches. And I have learned that one of the cruelest things a football system can do to a young player is to assign an unsuitable role, then judge them solely by results in that role. Dinh Bac may not have scored that night or created clear chances. But the real question is: did we give him a framework to succeed? Sports journalists have a bad habit: we like attribution. We attribute a defeat to a single cause, a single player, a single decision. That makes the story tidy, easy to understand, easy to share on social media. But football rarely operates on simple causality. A defeat usually comes from a chain of small mistakes, a chain of structural problems, a chain of decisions made months earlier. Blaming Xuan Son's absence — as a tidy and safe explanation — inadvertently hides deeper issues: squad depth, fitness, preparation, and the coaching staff's ability to adapt. Expert Doan Minh Xuong pointed out that most Vietnamese players entered the match in poor physical condition. That is a far more alarming signal than the absence of one player. Because poor conditioning is not bad luck. It is a systemic problem — a problem in fitness coaching, in the congested fixture schedule, in squad management, in ensuring players have enough recovery time between matches. When a team enters a major regional tournament without a full squad, without optimum fitness, and without a contingency plan for the loss of a key player, that says the problem is not the match that day. The problem lies in what happened before — long before. I remember another story, less told, about the Vietnamese women's team in 2026. The pandemic halted all tournaments, 140 women players lost income, stadiums closed. I called 12 women players for Zoom interviews. One was a 26-year-old midfielder in Thai Binh working as a delivery driver to survive. She told me: "I watch livestreams of the men's teams training in other countries while I cannot go out. I wish I could be like them." That story had no goals, no titles, no audience. But it taught me a lesson about resilience and about the value of being heard. And I realized that, in football as in life, what we do not say often matters more than what we say. Vietnam's women's team won the Southeast Asian championship with almost no one mentioning them. They had no Xuan Son, no expert analysis in newspapers, no prime-time live broadcast. Yet they still won. They won because they had a system, a collective, a cohesion that did not depend on any single individual. That makes me wonder: why cannot the men's team do the same? The answer, I think, lies in one word: dependence. Vietnam's men's team has become dependent on Xuan Son. Not only tactically, but psychologically. The players know there is a great striker up front, someone who can create a goal from nothing, someone who can receive the ball in the box and finish calmly. His presence creates a sense of security — and that sense of security is the most dangerous thing in sport. It makes other players less proactive, less creative, less willing to try new things. They start to play around a star, rather than with each other as a collective. And when the star disappears, they no longer know what to do. That night in Bandung, what I saw most clearly was not a weak attack. What I saw was a collective losing its bearings. Players passed the ball as a reflex, but no one dared to take the ball and drive, no one dared a risky pass, no one dared a shot from distance — except in desperation. They played like a team waiting for a miracle, and the miracle never came. Elite football has no room for waiting. Elite football is an endless hunt, a race without a finish line, a battle between will and patience. And that night, Thailand was the more patient side. Tactically, there is much to learn from what Thailand did. They did not need possession. They did not need to dominate shot counts. They only needed a clear plan and the discipline to execute it. Their low block was so compact that Vietnamese players could barely get the ball into dangerous areas. The distance between Thailand's lines was always well calibrated, tight enough to block line-breaking passes yet elastic enough to shrink space near the box. They never rushed forward to challenge. They waited. They stayed patient. And when chances came, they struck with sharp counters. It was not beautiful football, but it was brutally effective. Vietnam, by contrast, has a known strength: defensive counter-attacking. In recent tournaments, Vietnam has played best when allowed to defend proactively, inviting opponents forward and striking with lightning counters. But that night, everything was inverted. Thailand scored first, and Vietnam was forced to push up. They were forced to play the football they are not good at: controlling football, imposing football, football that requires a center-forward who can finish the match. When a team is forced to play a style alien to its nature, the outcome is rarely good. And that night, a bad outcome arrived for Vietnam. The truth is, without Sarach Yooyen's first-half strike, the match might have gone a completely different way. But football does not operate on "if only." Football operates on "what happened." And what happened was a Vietnamese team that looked weaker, duller, and more short of ideas than its fans expected. Let me be clear: I do not deny expert Doan Minh Xuong's assessment. "Without Xuan Son, Vietnam's attack is clearly much weaker" — that is true, proven by the reality on the pitch. But I want to ask a bigger question: why do we accept such a reality? Why does a national team allow itself to depend on one player to the point where his absence becomes the explanation for every failure? And why do we not ask about the responsibility of those who allowed that situation to develop — those who failed to build a reserve attack, those who failed to find a Plan B, those who failed to ensure fitness across the squad, those who failed to create an attacking system that can operate without a star? I believe Vietnamese football can do better. I believe players like Dinh Bac, like other young forwards in the V.League, can become good center-forwards if they are trained, given opportunities, and placed in a suitable system. I believe Vietnam's problem that night was not the absence of a specific individual, but the absence of a clear football philosophy, a consistent development method, and a long-term vision. In the longest night in Bandung, I could not hear the breath of an empty stand as I once did at women's matches. The stand was not empty. Vietnamese fans sang, cheered, and hoped. But I could hear something else — a quiet disappointment, a doubt beginning to creep in, a question no one dared voice: if we cannot beat Thailand when facing a little difficulty, who can we beat when facing greater difficulty? That question has no easy answer. But I am not writing this article to spread pessimism. I am writing it because I believe every crisis carries an opportunity. Xuan Son's absence — though a major loss — has forced Vietnam to face an uncomfortable truth: they cannot depend forever on one player. They must build a real team. They must have an attack that operates as a collective, not as a collection of individuals serving one star. They must have a contingency plan for every situation. And they must start today. People count goals. I collect falls and resurrections. The night in Bandung was a fall. But I believe that from the ruins of a defeat, a team can rise stronger — if they are willing to look in the mirror and ask hard questions. Vietnam may not top the group in this tournament, may not continue the path fans expected. But if they turn this defeat into a lesson, into a motivation to change, into an opportunity to rejuvenate and develop new talents, then this defeat will not be wasted. Football, like life, is not a sequence of goals. Football, like life, is a sequence of failures and rises, mistakes and corrections, stumbles and lessons. Vietnam stumbled in Bandung. The only meaningful question now is: what will they learn from the fall? Will they keep blaming the absence of one player, or will they look at their system, their preparation, their squad building, their development of young players, and ask themselves: "Can we do better?" The answer — I believe — is yes. And the next question is: "Do we want to do better?" Only they can answer that. When I think of the young players sitting on the bench in Bandung that night, I remember myself at 24, sitting in the media area of a stadium in Kuala Lumpur, watching Huynh Nhu run that entire final, sweat, cry, and win the title. None of them — those girls — had an expert analyst in a major newspaper speaking about them. None of them was considered "irreplaceable" in a tactical system. Yet they still won. They won because they were never allowed to depend on anyone — because society never gave them the privilege of dependency. The value of a player is not on the price tag, but in what they dare to reclaim. And the value of a team, perhaps, is not in the stars in its lineup, but in what it can do when those stars are no longer there. Vietnam now stands before a defining question: are they a team built around one man, or are they a real team? The answer will emerge not only in the next match, but in the years ahead — in how they train youth, how they build the squad, how they face challenges that no single name can rescue them from. I do not stand in the middle of the pitch. I stand at the boundary where imagination begins. And from that boundary, I imagine a Vietnam team no longer dependent on a star. A team whose players believe in each other, play for each other, and win because of each other. These imaginings may be vague, but every revolution in football starts with a vision. The defeat in Bandung may be a mirror — and that mirror is reflecting a truth that all of us — journalists, experts, coaches, players, and fans — need to face. Football should not be defined by absences. It should be defined by presences, by efforts, by stories told and heard. And the story of that night in Bandung, however painful, is still a story that needs telling. It is the story of a team finding itself again. And who knows — in the months ahead, we may see that team rise — not because someone returned, but because they learned how to stand on their own feet.