VFF 2027-2031 election: the Finance Vice Chairman seat is where Vietnamese football's money gets decided

On the afternoon of 21 October, while the press room at Hoa Xuan stadium was still buzzing with transfer talk, a club official pulled his chair close to mine and asked quietly: "You have followed this team for years, tell me honestly, who is going to hold Vietnamese football's money next term?" I said nothing for a few seconds. In 2026, in this same corner of the city, I organised joint meetings between veteran and young reporters to agree on how we covered SHB Da Nang. Back then we argued about engagement data, about short clips, about how to keep readers' trust after every bulletin. Nobody asked where the federation's money sat. Nearly a decade later, that distant question turns out to be the founding question.

On 21 October, the Vietnam Football Federation published its candidate list for the tenth term, covering 2027-2031: three candidates for Chairman, eight for Vice Chairman and 31 for the Executive Committee. Incumbent Chairman Tran Quoc Tuan, born in 2026, has held office for five years and is on the list. The other two names are Nguyen Duc Thuy, born in 2026, a construction and banking businessman, and Nguyen Xuan Vu, born in 2026, a board member of a major bank who currently serves as the federation's Vice Chairman for communications and external relations.

The vote belongs to 57 member organisations, by secret ballot. The congress is expected in late December 2026 or January 2027, after dossiers are vetted by the Ministry of Home Affairs and the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism. The current list may still change, because some member organisations have not yet submitted full nomination documents.

One detail is easy to miss: the rule that each person may stand for only one position. Yet Tran Quoc Tuan appears both in the Chairman slot and the Vice Chairman for professional affairs slot, while Nguyen Xuan Vu appears in three: Chairman, Vice Chairman for finance and sponsorship, and Vice Chairman for communications and external relations. Two men, four seats, one rule. Someone will have to choose, and the timing of that choice is what matters.

The Vice Chairman seat for finance and sponsorship, not the Chairman seat, is where the cash flow is decided, and therefore where the real running of Vietnamese football over the next four years is decided.

Look at the candidates for that seat and two kinds of capital appear. Nguyen Xuan Vu represents relationship capital: years on a bank board, a wide cross-sector network, the communications portfolio already in hand, plus the chairmanship of the Vietnam Table Tennis Federation. A multi-sport profile, unusual for a football federation.

Nguyen Duc Thuy represents cash capital: a construction and banking businessman linked to Sai Gon Xuan Thanh from 2026 to 2026, a club later dissolved, then to Ninh Binh from 2026. At the start of the 2026-2026 season he handed the Ninh Binh club chairmanship to his daughter Nguyen Ngoc My Anh. For anyone who has watched this game long enough, the move reads easily: separating personal assets from a seat about to be taken, to pre-empt conflict-of-interest questions. In the same group sits incumbent finance and sponsorship Vice Chairman Nguyen Trung Kien, re-nominated, a signal that the current sponsorship model is not being dismantled.

The professional affairs Vice Chairman race has three names: Tran Anh Tú, Tran Quoc Tuan and Tran Huy Duc. Tran Anh Tú holds the post and simultaneously chairs the board of the Vietnam Professional Football JSC, the body that runs the V-League and the National Cup. One man sitting on both sides of the table: the side that writes the rules and the side that runs the competition.

Among the 31 Executive Committee candidates, 12 come from V-League clubs, five from the First Division, one from the Second Division. Eighteen out of 31, a club-linked majority. The two women candidates are Nguyen Thi My Dung, a member of FIFA's Disciplinary Committee, and Bui Thi Hien Luong.

Tran Quoc Tuan holds an advantage few mention: seats at the ASEAN Football Federation, the Asian Football Confederation and FIFA. A new chairman forfeits those chairs, and in football a seat at a regional board table is sometimes worth more than a tournament place.

Here I have to say plainly what stayed in my head all afternoon at Hoa Xuan. The generational renewal story is being told smoothly: 2026, 2026, 2026, three generations in one photograph. But federation elections in Vietnam have never been decided by photographs. They are decided by bloc votes from provincial clubs and local federations, bodies with very concrete interests in fixture calendars, promotion places and support money. The 3-8-31 list says nothing about those blocs. And the claim that one candidate enjoys broad support is opinion, with no ballot published to verify it.

Caution is also due at a gate few look at: state vetting before the list is finalised. It is the least transparent step in the whole cycle, and the point where every nomination calculation can be rewritten. On top of that, the list is incomplete, which means today's name sheet is not the congress's name sheet.

In Moscow in 2026 I misnamed an Iranian striker three times in the first half. I went home, replayed the tape, asked twelve colleagues to flag my pronunciation errors, then built my own transliteration table. Since then I have made a habit of tracing a subject's file back to birthplace and upbringing before writing a single line about them. With this candidate list I am doing exactly the same, except the files are longer and fewer people bother to read them.

I still tell young reporters: in a federation, every seat has a name on paper, but only a few seats have signing rights. Sowing words means harvesting responsibility, especially when those words touch the money of an entire football ecosystem. A small mistake can break a reader's trust, and a small seat can shape an entire term.

Four things will clarify the outcome. Whether the final list still reads 3-8-31. Whether vetting removes anyone. Whether the candidate presented as favourite publishes a financial platform, or keeps talking only about ambition. And how the one-person-one-position rule is applied to two overlapping dossiers.

Vietnamese football has moved past the belief that changing people changes fortunes. The 2027-2031 term will be remembered not for who sits highest in the photograph, but for who dares to publish the lines: how much revenue, how much sponsorship, how much spent on youth development. When those lines are on the table before voting day, the ballots of 57 member organisations will finally be football's ballots, rather than those of a group of men sitting in one room.