2026-2027 National Cup: Four V-League Casualties, and a Reason That Isn't Really About Football

Late afternoon in Quy Nhon, football returned to its bare truth: a match with almost no spectators. The Pleiku pitch is being renovated because its drainage fails whenever the rain pours, so Hoang Anh Gia Lai had to borrow another ground as home. There was no drumbeat from the highlands, no familiar red smoke, only empty concrete rows and a young Hung Yen side playing as if this were the last match of their lives. In the 77th minute the score was 1-3. In the 90+4th, a penalty pulled it back to 2-3. The final whistle blew, and Hoang Anh Gia Lai's players walked into the tunnel with their heads down. When the stands are empty, I hear the heartbeat of football slowing down. Over that weekend, eight qualifying matches of the 2026-2027 National Cup were played. Five V-League representatives took part; four went home empty-handed. Three of those four defeats happened at home. That is enough to turn an ordinary Saturday into a talking point, but not enough to explain what was really happening behind those bowed heads. The only side to escape the storm was Bac Ninh, who beat Long An 3-2 away. The other four fell in very different ways. Thanh Hoa lost 0-2 to Becamex TP.HCM at home, against a club just relegated to the first division and now a promotion candidate. Becamex TP.HCM's squad was in no way inferior to the hosts, and their hunger was far greater. Hai Phong lost 0-1 to Thep Can Tho, a club that has just relocated from Quang Ninh to the Mekong Delta and had lost its opening first-division match. Only days after joining, striker Thaileon scored the only goal of the game in the first half. Hong Linh Ha Tinh drew 0-0 with Phu Tho after 90 minutes and then lost 2-3 on penalties. And Hoang Anh Gia Lai, as told, lost 2-3 to Hung Yen on a borrowed pitch after trailing 1-3 from the 77th minute. What these four defeats share is not player quality. It is the order of priorities. For many V-League clubs, especially those without ambition, the National Cup has never been a main arena. The deeper you go, the higher the travel and accommodation costs. Squad management becomes harder when the first division and the V-League run in parallel, because a small injury in a cup tie can cost two league rounds. Relegation survival matters far more, both for pride and for cash flow. That indifference opens the door for first-division sides to show greater commitment, and the upsets appear as a natural consequence rather than a miracle. Thanh Hoa is the clearest case of this logic. The club from Thanh Hoa province only learned it still existed right before the 2026-2027 V-League kicked off, with a limited squad because there was not enough money to keep key players or sign new ones. A club living round by round cannot treat a cup tie as a priority. On top of that, before facing Becamex TP.HCM, Thanh Hoa faced a fresh financial worry. According to a document dated 16 September, FIFA ordered the club to pay more than 305,000 USD, roughly 8 billion VND, to Rimario Gordon after the Jamaican striker filed a complaint with FIFA. If the matter is not settled within 45 days of receiving the document, the club will be banned from registering new players for three transfer windows. The complication is that the case arose during the previous sponsor's tenure, while Thanh Hoa has since been handed over to a new sponsor. For a club counting every dong to survive the V-League, an 8 billion VND liability is a variable capable of changing an entire season, and perhaps several transfer windows after it. Football at the lower levels always works this way: financial obligations from the past follow the club into the future. Hoang Anh Gia Lai is also entering a difficult season in the relegation race, after two straight defeats at the start of the 2026-2027 V-League. The squad is thinner than last season, so against a more ambitious Hung Yen, coach Le Quang Trai's men fell quickly. Having to leave Pleiku for Quy Nhon further eroded a home advantage that was no longer a charm anyway. Looking at how these four clubs approached their matches, a common pattern emerges. The starting line-up was not the strongest. The tempo was never raised. Challenges were not pursued to the end. When those signals appear together, the result is decided before the referee even blows the opening whistle. This is what data cannot fully tell. But it shows clearly in small details: a captain clapping for his teammates after conceding, a coach sitting still for the entire second half, a goalkeeper stepping out of his goal a few beats slower than usual. In the emptiness, I hear what a noisy stand has never told. Based on my experience covering matches in both the V-League and the first division across several seasons, the gap between the two tiers is no longer as wide as the table suggests. Many first-division clubs now have carefully selected foreign players, clearer organisation, and above all far higher motivation. When one side fields its best eleven while the other calculates for a long campaign, the technical gap becomes the smallest factor in the equation. The familiar explanation that V-League clubs 'do not care about the National Cup' is both right and wrong. Right in that priorities lie elsewhere. Wrong in that this has never been a generous choice; it is a forced one. Those clubs do not reject the cup out of arrogance; they are compelled to because their squad depth is too thin for two fronts. And when a club has to choose between two competitions, the fans always pay the price. They buy tickets, travel hundreds of kilometres, and receive a rotated line-up and a result already settled in the dressing room. Nothing hurts more than realising your faith was the only variable never entered into the calculation. But another, less comfortable point deserves saying. An early cup exit may benefit Hoang Anh Gia Lai, allowing the highlands club to focus fully on the V-League, where it fights relegation every season. Hai Phong and Hong Linh Ha Tinh have started the 2026-2027 V-League reasonably, with one defeat and one win each, so their cup exits are unsurprising when they want to concentrate on survival. The trouble is that when this explanation is repeated often enough, it shifts from a strategy into a habit, and from a habit into a system. The National Cup gradually loses its greatest function: creating a chance for small clubs to live a big dream, and for big clubs to confront their own depth. I once stumbled in front of a microphone, and learned to stand up through my own words. Every stumble leaves a deep hole – but that is exactly where I plant my sentences. Vietnamese football now stands before a similar hole, and the question is not who will win the 2026-2027 National Cup, but whether this tournament still has enough pull to make a coach field his strongest eleven on a September afternoon. If the answer is no, then the first-division victories last weekend are not sporting upsets. They are the echo of a system choosing to shrink, and that echo will outlast a single qualifying round.