The Headwind on the Flanks: Vietnamese Football and the Fate of Traditional Wingers

On the stands of Hang Day Stadium, one April afternoon, I watched a winger hug the right touchline. He did not cut inside. He did not search for space between the two centre-backs. He simply ran along the byline, waited for the ball, and crossed. When the ball left his foot, the whole stand rose. They shouted his name — not the name of an imported star or a flashy number ten. They shouted the name of a man doing the work that modern football has slowly come to regard as obsolete.

I have followed Vietnamese football for many years, from afternoons in Vinh and Nam Dinh to the floodlit nights at My Dinh. Whenever a traditional winger makes a difference, the Vietnamese crowd reacts in a way of its own. It is not the "oh" of technical admiration. It is a roar, as if they had just been reminded of a piece of their own memory.

That Kazan wind taught me that youth never rolls slowly on schedule. But it also taught me that football does not only run forward. Sometimes it runs sideways, along the touchline, toward the values that analytical models were too quick to file away as obsolete.

Vietnamese football has undergone a remarkable decade of transformation. From a Southeast Asian side built on physicality and spirit, the national team has risen to become the region's leading force. In 2026, the Vietnam U23 team reached the final of the AFC U23 Championship in Changzhou, a feat that stirred the whole country. That same year, the senior team won the AFF Cup after a ten-year wait. In 2026, for the first time in history, Vietnam reached the third round of World Cup qualifying. In early 2026, the team appeared at the AFC Asian Cup finals.

Those milestones came with a tactical revolution. Under coach Park Hang-seo, the team played pragmatically and solidly, built on a disciplined defensive block and lightning counter-attacks. When Philippe Troussier took over in 2026, he tried to impose a possession game in the European style. Then Kim Sang-sik arrived in May 2026, bringing a balance between the two schools.

Behind the glow of those major tournaments lies a question that has never been fully answered: what did Vietnamese football trade away in order to modernise? As clubs in V.League 1 — a competition of 14 clubs — raced to follow the European trend, they collectively switched to the inverted winger model. Right-footed players were pushed to the left flank and vice versa, so they could finish with their stronger foot. The touchline was gradually left empty. Crossing became a last resort rather than a first weapon.

At youth academies such as Hoang Anh Gia Lai, PVF and Viettel, young players are taught to cut inside from a very early age. They learn to find space between the two centre-backs, to receive the ball in the half-space, to finish with their stronger foot. Very few are encouraged to hug the touchline and cross. The result is that a generation of pure wingers is slowly vanishing from the map of Vietnamese football.

This is where the analysis must stay clear-headed. In theory, the inverted winger creates a numerical advantage in central areas. He drags the opposing full-back inside, opening space for his own full-back to push high. That is the logic of modern football, the logic of Pep Guardiola and his inheritors. An inverted winger is both a finishing threat and a creator from a central position, a man who sets the rhythm for the whole system.

But Vietnamese football is not English or Spanish football. Vietnamese players are smaller, and their ability to win duels in central areas is more limited. When every team crowds the middle, they cancel one another out. The match becomes an unforgiving battle in midfield, where — in my experience of watching — V.League sides frequently run into dead ends and must rely on individual moments.

Conversely, it is precisely the teams willing to keep their width that make the difference. In the most recent season, I noticed a metric few people mention: the number of goals scored from crosses. It does not appear in the glamorous statistical tables, but it reflects a simple point — when the opposing defence collapses into the middle, the flanks are the least guarded area. A good cross from the wing has a far higher chance of creating an opportunity than a through-ball blocked by four defenders.

The way the national team operates shows this. In its most successful matches, Vietnam has not won by imposing itself in central midfield. It has won through lightning raids down the flanks, through the speed of wingers hugging the touchline, and through crosses sharp as a blade. Nguyen Van Toan, Phan Van Duc — names that once made opposing defences spin like tops — are all products of the traditional winger school. They are not the most technically gifted players, but they understand the value of width better than anyone.

When these players decline or are absent, the national team immediately loses its attacking width. The forward line becomes monotonous, predictable, and dependent on through-balls into a packed defence. That is the inevitable consequence of erasing the traditional winger — an erasure I consider a mistake.

Data does not lie, but data does not tell the whole story either. A traditional winger may not have a high scoring record. He is not scored by successful dribbles or penalty-box entries. His value lies in things that are hard to measure: the space he creates, the fatigue he plants in the opposing full-back's legs, and the rhythm he brings to the whole team. In a football culture where everything is quantified, those values are treated as secondary.

In the match I mentioned at the start, that winger did not score. He did not assist. But he was the man who ran the most on the pitch, and by the 85th minute the opposing full-back no longer had the legs to follow him. The goal came from the very space he left behind. That is the kind of football the statistical tables cannot capture, yet anyone sitting in the stand can feel it.

There is a blind spot in the collective memory of Vietnamese football. We remember the goals, but forget the men who created them. We celebrate the scorers, but play down the players doing the quiet work on the flanks. And when pundits praise the "modernisation" of Vietnamese football, they often forget that this modernisation is sometimes a homogenisation.

VAR is another example. When VAR was introduced to V.League 1 from the 2026 season, many believed it would reduce controversy. But watching the matches, I saw the opposite. VAR does not erase controversy; it merely moves it from the pitch to the review room and the grey areas of the law. Decisions now depend on the camera angle, on the moment chosen to draw the line, on how a video referee reads a situation in three seconds. Controversy does not disappear. It becomes more sophisticated, and therefore harder to resolve.

The same holds for the winger story. When we try to measure everything with data, we inadvertently erase the values that cannot be measured. The traditional winger becomes the victim of an evaluation system that has itself misdefined the value of width. And when Vietnamese football loses its width, it loses a playing style — and, more than that, a part of its identity.

Vietnamese football stands at a fork in the road. One path leads to uniformity, where every team plays the same way and every player is moulded to a single template. Another path preserves diversity, where width still has a place, and where traditional wingers can still make a stand rise to its feet.

In a world without spectators, football is left with only breath and truth. But on the stands of Hang Day that afternoon, there were spectators. And they sang. That is something no analytical model can measure, and something Vietnamese football should not lose.