National Cup 2026-2027: Four V-League Clubs Fall, and the Debts Lie Beyond the Pitch

Minute 77, Quy Nhon stadium. The stands were not thick enough for the chanting to become waves, and I sat in the fifth row of the press section, some twenty metres from the touchline, hearing coach Le Quang Trai call out his players' names. The scoreboard flicked over: 1-3. Hoang Anh Gia Lai had conceded a third goal, and on the faces of the young players from the highlands, what I read was not shock but a tiredness that had been announced in advance. I wrote a single line in my black notebook: "77 – 1-3". Some matches are fully recorded by the scoreline alone. I remember the colour of the grass that day before I remember the score. The turf at Quy Nhon turned yellow late in the afternoon, drier than the Pleiku pitch that is being dug up to rebuild its drainage system after repeated heavy rain. The highland club had to borrow someone else's home ground, borrowing the familiarity along with it, and paid for that with a third goal on 77 minutes. Only in the 90+4th minute did they pull one back to 2-3 from the penalty spot. Scoring when the match is already decided is a kind of consolation nobody wants. EIGHT TIES, FOUR NAMES GONE The eight qualifying ties of the 2026-2027 National Cup took place across one weekend, and four clubs currently playing in the V-League left the competition. Three of those four defeats came at home. The only exception was Bac Ninh, who won 3-2 away at Long An. The list reads like an inventory. Thanh Hoa lost 0-2 to Becamex Ho Chi Minh City at home. Hoang Anh Gia Lai lost 2-3 to Hung Yen in Quy Nhon. Hai Phong lost 0-1 to Thep Can Tho at Lach Tray. Hong Linh Ha Tinh drew 0-0 with Phu Tho over 90 minutes and then went down 2-3 on penalties. What stands out is the identity of the winners. Becamex Ho Chi Minh City were just relegated to the second tier and are now among the favourites to bounce straight back. Thep Can Tho have just relocated from Quang Ninh to the Mekong Delta, lost their opening fixture of the 2026-2027 First Division, and still left Lach Tray with all three points. Striker Thaileon had joined the club only days earlier and scored the only goal of the match inside the first half. A player who had not yet learned all his team-mates' names decided the fate of a V-League club. Based on my experience covering matches across central Vietnam and the northern delta, these qualifying rounds always follow a repeating pattern. The second-tier side walks in with nothing left to lose. The V-League side walks in with a fixture list already waiting behind it. The gap in squad quality does not disappear, but it is neutralised by the gap in priorities. The rhythm of a season is not measured in goals but in the Saturdays that repeat. And when one of those Saturdays is taken away for a cup tie, people start doing the maths. THE COST EQUATION THAT NEVER APPEARS ON THE SCOREBOARD For many V-League clubs, especially those without title ambitions, the National Cup has never been a primary arena. The deeper you go, the more travel and accommodation cost. Every extra round means one more coach journey, one more hotel night, one more set of meals for thirty people. Staying in the V-League, meanwhile, carries an economic value many times greater than a quarter-final played in an empty stadium. I once sat in the meeting room of a mid-table club and watched the coaching staff break the budget down round by round. The National Cup is a cost line with no matching revenue line. For well-run clubs that is a worthwhile gamble. For clubs living on season-by-season sponsorship, it is pure risk. What is happening is not the rise of the First Division, but the self-shrinking of one section of the V-League. The second-tier sides are simply seizing the exact moment when their opponents voluntarily place their priorities elsewhere. Thanh Hoa are the clearest example. The club from Thanh Hoa province only learned it still existed just before the 2026-2027 V-League kicked off, with a thin squad because there was not enough money to keep key players or sign new ones. On top of that, before facing Becamex Ho Chi Minh City, Thanh Hoa faced a fresh financial worry. FIFA has ordered the club to pay more than 305,000 USD, roughly 8 billion Vietnamese dong, to Rimario Gordon after the Jamaican striker filed a claim with FIFA. The document reached the club on 16 September, with a clear condition: if the matter is not resolved within 45 days, the club will be banned from registering new players for three transfer windows. The deadline falls in late October. The complication is that the case arose during the previous sponsor's tenure, while Thanh Hoa have since been handed over to a new sponsor. This is the kind of dispute the sports administration world calls "contract residue" - obligations left behind when a brand changes hands, yet still attached to the club's legal entity. The exclusive story is only the visible part; beneath it are the midnight calls to lawyers and agents, conversations nobody wants minuted. I spent days cross-checking the FIFA document, information from the club's leadership and Rimario Gordon's representatives before writing a single line. In Vietnamese football, an administrative sanction from FIFA carries more weight than a cup defeat. A ban on registering players for three transfer windows means a club cannot patch its defence, cannot rotate when injuries strike, and cannot negotiate with anyone. A club in that position fielding its strongest side in the National Cup would be committing athletic self-harm. Hoang Anh Gia Lai took a different road to the same destination. The highland club are enduring a difficult season; after two straight defeats at the start of the 2026-2027 V-League, the relegation battle has already appeared on the horizon. This season's squad is considered even thinner than last year's. Against a hungry Hung Yen, coach Le Quang Trai's men fell quickly, so quickly that I never got past the second page of my notebook. Hai Phong and Hong Linh Ha Tinh, meanwhile, have not started the 2026-2027 V-League badly, each with one defeat and one win. Their cup exits therefore fall inside the predictable zone, because both need to save their strength for the rest of the domestic season. One technical detail makes the situation more uncomfortable. The five-substitution rule helps teams with squad depth rotate better, but for teams with only fifteen players genuinely capable of competing, it turns the final twenty minutes into a true war of attrition. Players run more, collide more, and recover more slowly for the next match. When a cup tie is wedged between two V-League rounds, the five-substitution allowance becomes a harsh reminder of just how thin that squad is. A CONTRARIAN VIEW: AN EARLY EXIT IS NOT AS TIDY AS IT SOUNDS The familiar argument trotted out whenever a V-League club leaves the cup is that an early exit may actually help, letting the club focus on the league. It sounds reasonable, and in a few cases it may well be right. But it ignores three things. The first is match rhythm. A thin squad does not rest by leaving the cup; it merely loses the minutes its fringe players need. A young centre-back given ninety minutes in a cup qualifier may be the emergency option in March, when the club enters the run-in with two injured names on the list. The second is the relationship with supporters. The National Cup is one of the few occasions local fans can meet their club at low ticket prices. When a club quietly exits in the first round at home, what is lost is not just a match but a point of contact with the city that raised it. The third, and most important, is the value of the competition itself. If the relegation group collectively treats the cup as a burden, the commercial value of the entire league system erodes season by season. Sponsors read the line-ups fielded in cup qualifying rounds. They see that indifference, and they reprice the contract. Clubs save one coach journey today and receive a smaller sponsorship deal a few years later. To write a true story, I have to stand where nobody stands - which means being in Quy Nhon when the stands are only one-third full, at Lach Tray when people start leaving before the second half is under way, and in the corridor of a club meeting room where nobody knows whether next month's wages can be paid. The press tower is the highest place to look from, but not the closest place to understand. It is also only fair to say this about the second-tier clubs: they were not handed anything for free. Becamex Ho Chi Minh City, Thep Can Tho, Hung Yen and Phu Tho all had to play one genuinely good match. Thaileon scored in the first half. Hung Yen led 3-1 before the game closed out. Phu Tho kept a clean sheet for 90 minutes and then showed stronger nerve in the shootout. Determination is a skill, not an excuse. INTERNAL SIGNALS TO WATCH For Hoang Anh Gia Lai, an early cup exit may be a scheduling release, but it does not erase the core problem: a thin squad, an unavailable home ground, and a relegation fight that lasts all season. If they are still in the bottom half in April, people will return to this 2-3 defeat with a different eye. For Thanh Hoa, the problem lies off the pitch. The 45-day deadline from the 16 September document is a hard marker, and it arrives before the mid-season transfer window opens. How the club handles the 305,000 USD owed to Rimario Gordon will determine whether they can reinforce for the rest of the season. For Hai Phong and Hong Linh Ha Tinh, two cup defeats say little. But if neither has separated from the bottom group by round eight of the V-League, then this weekend's losses will become evidence of a season planned too early. If you want to follow this with me, keep an eye on three things: the FIFA deadline, Thanh Hoa's registration list in the next transfer window, and the minutes played by under-21 players at the clubs that just left the cup. Those signals tell the truth better than any post-match statement. As for the matches themselves, I will still be in the fifth row, black notebook open, waiting to see how the next beat of the season lands.