Foreign Striker's Hat-trick Gives Bac Ninh Club a Winning Start in the National Cup

On the afternoon of September 19, 2026, in the twelfth minute, Brenner Marlos met a corner from the left at Long An stadium, rose above the entire home defence and headed the ball toward the far corner. The Long An goalkeeper dived a beat late. Applause rose in the stands and faded almost at once. The applause was thin, but hearts were still beating in the stands — the people sitting in the afternoon sun understood that the visitors had not come out for a stroll.

Forty minutes later Brenner had his second, from a left-wing delivery by Phan The Hung. Seventy minutes in he had his third: Vu Hong Quan's free kick struck the post, the ball rebounded, and he pounced on the loose ball. Three goals, three different ways, one name.

The final score: Bac Ninh Club beat Long An 3-2 in the 2026 National Cup qualifying round. As a single line it reads neatly. But two different stories live inside it: a foreign striker carrying almost the whole attack, and a collective that let the game slip in the space of about fifteen minutes.

Two roads to the same afternoon

Bac Ninh came into this match as a side that had just climbed a level. The club was a 2026 V-League newcomer after beating PVF-CAND in the promotion play-off, and in round two of the top flight it beat title candidate Cong An TP.HCM 1-0. Coach Paulo Foiani spoke at the time about his players' great confidence. For a newly promoted team, two straight wins in two different competitions is a start no one could have asked more from.

Long An arrived from the opposite direction. The club set out to find its first win of the new season but had lost 0-1 to Cong An Nhan Dan in the First Division's opening round. Playing at home in the National Cup qualifying round against a side from a higher division was a chance to find a rhythm — provided they were willing to meet the game with it from the first whistle.

Both teams placed their attacking burden on a foreign striker: Brenner Marlos for Bac Ninh, Romario Alves for Long An. This is a familiar feature of Vietnamese football in this period, when most goals in the professional leagues come from imported forwards and the rest of the team works to keep the match from falling apart.

Three goals and one structure

I do not comment on matches; I retell what the ball whispers. In this match the ball whispered in set pieces.

All three Bac Ninh goals came from corners, a delivery across the face of goal, or a dead-ball situation. The opener was a left-wing corner turned into an aerial duel won at the point of contact. The second followed Phan The Hung's run and delivery down the flank, where Brenner got in front of his marker and finished from close range. The third was a set piece: Vu Hong Quan's free kick hit the post and Brenner scored the rebound.

None of the goals came from passing moves through central midfield. That says something about how Bac Ninh create chances: they deliver the ball into the box on short, direct paths and trust one man to be in the right place. This is an attack built on set pieces and aerial delivery — effective in a single match, but concentrating almost all expectation on a single target. The pitch is a page, every run an unfinished line of verse — and at Long An that verse was completed by one man alone.

The match split into two unequal phases. From the twelfth minute to around the seventieth, the visitors controlled the game and turned their advantage into three goals. After the third, Long An seemed to wake up, pushed their line higher and forced Bac Ninh into hard defending. The hosts pulled two goals back to make it 3-2.

Long An's second goal came after centre-back Van Dat failed to clear cleanly, leaving the ball at the feet of Romario Alves. That is the kind of goal that can be fixed on the training ground rather than a sign of systemic collapse. But the way the visitors lost their rhythm after going three up is a different matter. Bac Ninh deliberately dropped off, sank their defensive line, and handed the opponent control of the tempo for the rest of the match. Game management with a three-goal lead, not the quality of the goals, is what this team still lacks.

By way of comparison: a side with V-League experience usually keeps the ball and reduces transition moments when leading by a distance. Bac Ninh have not yet built that habit, and do not yet have the squad depth to rotate. That is understandable for a newly promoted club, and it is also something upcoming opponents will see on video.

The contrarian view: collective memory records the scorer and erases the one who conceded

The memory of spectators, and probably of most local outlets, will keep the image of a foreign forward with three goals in one afternoon. The three goals are a fact. But collective memory always has a blind spot: it records the scorer and erases the one who lost the goal. In this match, what gets erased is the fifteen minutes in which Long An came back into the game, and the fragile structure Bac Ninh are carrying with them.

The familiar way of telling it also turns Long An's comeback into a heroic effort. Read more closely and something else appears: a team playing at home, chasing its first win, allowed the opponent to go three goals up before it started playing football. That comeback deserves credit for spirit, but it is also the invoice for seventy minutes of watching.

A scar is not ugly; it is a map of the matches already played. For Bac Ninh, the scar from this afternoon sits in the final fifteen minutes: not in the 3-2 scoreline, but in the fact that three goals did not buy a matching sense of safety. For Long An, the scar is that the team only found its rhythm once it was backed against the wall.

One thing is worth noting about the setting. A First Division club hosted a V-League newcomer in the National Cup qualifying round, and the gap between the two teams on the pitch was far smaller than the gap between the two divisions. That says the bottom of the V-League and the top of the First Division overlap considerably. For Long An, that is good news for the rest of the season.

What remains after the afternoon

A 3-2 win in a National Cup qualifying round decides nobody's season. Bac Ninh advance, and over the next few weeks they will have the chance to show that their strong start is real rather than the echo of a newly promoted side.

But when a promoted club lives on one foreign striker, what happens in the match where that striker cannot score? Bac Ninh will answer that over the rest of the season. Long An have just learned an expensive lesson: waking up fifteen minutes late, and paying for it with the whole match.