Becamex Ho Chi Minh City stun Thanh Hoa in the National Cup: when money and division tier move in opposite directions

The 34th minute and a ball that curled backwards

I was sitting in front of a screen in Osaka, a cup of coffee long cold by the tenth minute. On the pitch, the away side had just reorganised after a long clearance. Vo Hoang Minh Khoa, the Becamex Ho Chi Minh City captain, set the ball down next to the corner flag on the right. He did not look at the goal. He looked at the space behind the Thanh Hoa back line, the spot the goalkeeper could not reach without stepping too far off his line.

The ball left his foot, arced up, and spun back away from goal. It dropped onto the exact point where a teammate had begun his run before the stand had understood what was happening. The net rippled in the 34th minute.

I declared war on defensive football in 2026, and nobody has been brave enough to accept the challenge since. Tonight, though, I have to sit down and type this honestly: there are matches in which defending is not cowardice. It is a technical decision, calculated to the square metre, executed by people who know exactly what they are betting on.

A second-tier club played at the home of a V.League 1 club. A relegated club beat a club that had just climbed out of a financial crisis. A single-leg knockout tie in the National Cup, and those ninety minutes contained far more than the scoreline.

Context: two clubs moving in opposite directions

The Vietnamese National Cup is a single-leg knockout competition open to clubs across divisions. It is the tournament in which a club's administrative tier, the division it is registered in, can differ completely from its actual level on the pitch. This match was the clearest proof of that I have seen this season.

Becamex Ho Chi Minh City were relegated last season and are playing in the First Division. But they did not go down empty-handed. They have invested heavily, bringing in foreign players good enough for V.League 1, including the forward Daniel dos Anjos, and their squad contains a genuine national team striker in Nguyen Tran Viet Cuong. They have a named coach in Gerard Albadalejo and a captain capable of delivering set pieces you have to rehearse all week to produce.

Thanh Hoa are the mirror image. The club from Thanh Hoa province had just escaped a financial crisis, according to the information available to me, and are fighting for survival in V.League 1. They hosted a lower-division opponent as the favourite that simply had to win.

One thing before the analysis. Quantitative data such as expected goals, PPDA and possession share were not published in the sources I could reach. The original source of the match data is not identified, and time sensitivity was not assessed. That means every tactical conclusion below rests on what I saw with my own eyes and on verifiable facts. At 68 I no longer write the moment a message arrives. Verify first, then fire the cannon. That is how I live.

The shield was placed in exactly the right spot

Becamex chose to defend deep and wait to counter. They deliberately ceded control, accepted abandoning the midfield, and collapsed around the penalty area. It sounds simple, and it is simple. The difficulty is that ceding midfield without being torn apart is a problem of distances, not of attitude.

The gap between Becamex's defence and midfield in the first half stayed at a level where a Thanh Hoa midfielder receiving the ball had two options: pass sideways or backwards, or hit a long ball into a zone where a defender would head it clear. Neither led anywhere. This is the kind of defending I call baiting with boredom. It is not pretty. It makes neutral viewers yawn. And it wins.

What deserves credit is the preparation. A side that wants to play like Becamex has to be excellent at two things: defending set pieces and counter-attacking quickly. Both of their goals came from those two weapons. That is not luck. That is a plan correctly selected for a specific type of opponent.

The opener in the 34th minute came from a dead ball. Minh Khoa's delivery curled away from goal, meaning it would spin beyond the goalkeeper's reach if he rushed out, and it dropped into a zone where a defender would have to head it with his back to goal. A cross like that cannot be improvised. You rehearse it ten, twenty, thirty times, with the right runner and the right deliverer, to hope it lands in the right place once in a match.

What is worth noting is that Thanh Hoa knew this was coming. A lower-division side's set pieces are flagged in every tactical meeting. But knowing and preventing are two different things. When you are the favourite, you spend ninety per cent of your preparation on attacking and ten per cent on defending dead balls. That is a losing ratio.

The second goal and the broken offside trap

83rd minute. I sat up straight.

Becamex played a two-man combination in midfield, exchanged quick passes, then pushed the ball long into the space behind the Thanh Hoa defence. Viet Cuong accelerated. A defender raised his arm, stepped up, tried to spring the offside trap. The trap did not close.

I have watched that passage several times. The notable thing is not Viet Cuong's speed, though his speed is something V.League 1 defences have to respect. The notable thing is the timing of his start. A good striker does not run earlier than the defender. He waits for the defender to step up, waits for the moment the defender can no longer turn back, and only then goes. In the 83rd minute, after more than eighty minutes of running, still concentrating enough to read the opponent's stepping rhythm is the mark of a national team player.

A side that chooses to sit deep needs exactly three things to turn sitting deep into winning. First, a dead-ball deliverer who puts the ball in the right place. Second, a runner who accelerates at the right moment. Third, the patience of the whole team not to break its own structure after taking the lead. Becamex had all three, and that is why they advanced.

One detail deserves a longer pause. After the 34th-minute opener, Becamex did not relax their shape. They did not push up hunting a second goal. They kept playing as if the score were 0-0. That discipline is what lower-division sides usually lose the moment they score, and it is what makes them lose in the end. Becamex kept it.

Thanh Hoa and the disease of holding the ball without knowing what to do with it

Modern football is suffocating under people who are so afraid of losing that they have forgotten how to win.

Thanh Hoa played at home, as the favourite, and from what I could observe, they held more of the ball. It circulated through midfield and into the final third. But I challenge anyone to remember a single moment in the first half that made the Becamex goalkeeper dive.

Possession share is the most deceptive metric in football, and I have said that for years. A team can grind out sixty per cent of the ball with meaningless sideways and backward passes, with circulation that has no purpose. Viewers see the ball at their team's feet and feel in control. The stats board shows sixty per cent and everyone is satisfied. But goals are not scored with possession share.

To break a deep block you need one of three things: a player who can dribble past opponents in tight space, a passer with the vision to split two lines, or a dead-ball specialist with real range. Thanh Hoa showed no sign of any of the three in this match. The ball went wide, the ball was crossed, a Becamex defender headed it clear, and the cycle began again.

Worse was their reaction to conceding. The hosts pushed their line higher to chase an equaliser. That is what any team does, and it is precisely what a counter-attacking side is waiting for. The higher the line, the larger the space behind it. Becamex needed to change nothing; they simply kept to the plan, and the plan opened itself. The 83rd-minute second goal was the direct consequence of Thanh Hoa committing forward for nearly fifty minutes.

I once said something on air about the Japan national team and had an entire social media platform throw stones at me: Nishino killed himself with his own words, and then the crowd killed him again with their glee. I do not want the same to happen to Thanh Hoa's coaching staff. They lost this match because their squad had no solution for breaking a low block, not because anyone lacked effort. That problem can be fixed, but it must be fixed with people, and it must be fixed in the transfer window.

Referees, VAR and the forgotten stand

The 83rd-minute goal had to go through an offside check. Sitting in Osaka watching television, I could see the line graphics and the VAR conclusion.

The people in the stadium saw nothing at all.

They saw the referee raise a hand to his ear, wait, then point to the centre circle. Thirty seconds to a minute of information blackout. For an away side protecting a lead and a home side needing a goal, that minute of unexplained silence is a minute in which the emotions of tens of thousands of people hang in the air. When the goal was given, half the stand reacted with feeling rather than with information.

I have said many times that the problem with VAR in Asian football is not technology. It is the in-stadium explanation mechanism. Major leagues have begun replaying the incident on big screens with a short explanatory caption for the crowd. Here, transparency is still a slogan read out at press conferences. The people who paid to sit in the stand are the last ones remembered.

This is not the referee's fault in this match. They followed the procedure correctly. The problem is the design of the system.

The economics of a cup shock

The transfer market is the saddest theatre in sport, a stage where owners trade money for cowardice.

Let me point out something few noticed. The winning side plays in the First Division and was relegated last season. The losing side plays in V.League 1. But hand someone the two squad lists without the division labels and ask them to guess which club plays higher, and they will guess wrong.

Becamex have quality foreigners, a striker carrying a national team label, and a captain who delivers V.League 1-standard set pieces. That is spending above the ceiling of a second-tier division. In the economics of Vietnamese football, a club overspending its tier is buying promotion, not building a foundation to stay in the First Division. They are investing for a short-term climb and accepting that the wage bill will have to be restructured once they go up.

Thanh Hoa sit on the opposite side of the picture. A club that has just escaped a financial crisis is a club that has been through a period of delayed wages or reliance on some rescue source. After surviving that phase, club leadership typically cuts costs, thins the squad and prioritises survival over competition.

There is a small tragedy here that Vietnamese media should discuss more. A club that has just escaped a financial crisis while fighting relegation has an extremely thin safety margin. There is no room for a long-term injury to a key player, no room for a star demanding a mid-season exit, no room for a wrong signing in the mid-season window. A club like that only needs two mistakes to go down.

Early cup elimination has a two-way financial effect. The club loses gate revenue and prize money from a deeper cup run. But it also reduces fixtures, cuts travel costs, lowers injury risk and concentrates all resources on the league. For a relegation-threatened side, the second saving outweighs the first loss. This is a resource-reallocation calculation, not a purely sporting one.

Under the club licensing framework of the federation and the professional football company, one of the most important conditions is the absence of overdue payables. A club that has just escaped a financial crisis is a club whose licensing status deserves watching at the mid-season check. The word escaped implies resolution, but the margin remains paper thin.

And this is where I turn to agents. They are the largest hidden cost in the finances of a mid-sized club. When a First Division club has money, the agent ecosystem immediately turns towards it. When a club has just escaped a crisis, the agent ecosystem immediately looks to move its players out. Both currents are running, and we only see the surface through the noisy transfer rumours online.

The National Cup as a truth test

People say the National Cup is the tournament of surprises. I do not entirely agree. A surprise is when the weak beat the strong. This was a properly funded club beating a club in crisis.

The so-called surprise exists only on paper, because on paper we rank by division. A First Division club meeting a V.League 1 club means the V.League 1 club is stronger by default. But actual resources reversed that administrative order some time ago, and the National Cup is simply where that truth got a chance to show itself.

Based on my experience watching matches over several decades, I believe knockout cup competitions in Southeast Asian football are becoming a more honest yardstick than the league table. A table tells you which team accumulated more points over a period. A cup tie tells you which team is stronger at a specific moment, with no room for accumulated luck.

There is another signal worth noting. When a First Division club can still sign a national team striker at his peak and keep a foreigner good enough for V.League 1, the tier order of Vietnamese football is being decided more by cash flow and less by last season's results. Other leagues in the region have been through this. Vietnam is entering that phase now.

And here is where I could be wrong

I have to be honest with you, because if I am not honest, nobody will listen to a 68-year-old talking about Vietnamese football.

What I have is one match. One. I have no expected goals, no pressing intensity, no shot map. What I presented above is observation and reasoning, not statistics. If a more detailed analysis emerges showing Thanh Hoa actually created five clear chances and lost only because the visiting keeper was outstanding, I will be the first to sit down and rewrite this piece. In a match where possession share was not published, every structural conclusion has only relative value.

Second possibility: I may be assigning tactics a bigger role than they truly played. The simplest explanation of this match is that Thanh Hoa played badly. No preparation in the final third, no contingency plan, no one able to create something out of nothing. If that is right, Becamex did not need to do anything special to win. I cannot rule that out, and if it is right, the praise for Albadalejo's plan should be halved.

Third possibility: the story that early cup elimination is good for Thanh Hoa sounds reasonable, but it may also be pre-prepared expectation lowering. I have been in this job long enough to know that when a club says elimination is beneficial, there is usually a much bigger worry behind the sentence. If Thanh Hoa lose two of their next three league matches, public opinion will re-read this story in reverse: the club knew it had a problem and talked ahead of it.

Fourth, and the one that keeps me up: Becamex's dependency. This team wins with set pieces and with one striker's speed. If Minh Khoa is man-marked at deliveries, and if Viet Cuong is substituted or injured, how do Becamex find goals? Daniel dos Anjos is another attacking option, but a team with only two ways to score will be neutralised at exactly the wrong time. That is the test the First Division will set for them all season.

I am not afraid of being wrong. This old man who shoots from the hip has been wrong many times, and each time I gained a story to tell. What I fear is saying safe things that anyone could say.

Three things you can verify before the season ends

First, if Becamex keep Viet Cuong and their foreign pair fit, they will win a promotion place to V.League 1 this season. Their investment only makes sense if that is the outcome.

Second, if Thanh Hoa reach the later part of the season without adding a player who can create in tight space or a genuine dead-ball specialist, they will be in the bottom group within four to six rounds. This defeat showed where their attacking plan goes when it meets a deep block.

Third, if Thanh Hoa lose two more league matches in a row, the story that early elimination was good will become the story that this club ran out of ideas from the start. Media do not need new information to rewrite an old story. They just need one more defeat.

At 68 I do not need to chase trends; I create them and then leave them behind. What interests me now is a question I will leave you to answer. Of the two clubs that played tonight, which one is truly less courageous: the First Division side that accepts sitting deep, endures long spells without the ball, patiently waits for two moments to kill the game, or the V.League 1 side that holds the ball for most of the match, passes sideways half after half, and dares to open up no other solution?

I declared war on defensive football in 2026. Tonight I still stand with attacking football. But I will never stand against intelligence.