No Star Is Bigger Than the Team, Even When the Star Is Nguyen Xuan Son

On the night of January 5, 2026, at Rajamangala Stadium in Bangkok, Nguyen Xuan Son was carried off on a stretcher during the second leg of the ASEAN Cup final. His teammates had to play out the rest of the match without their number one striker. In Seoul, where I live and write, I watched that game in a small Vietnamese restaurant near Itaewon. When the final whistle blew, the second leg ended 3-2 to Vietnam, 5-3 on aggregate across the two legs, and the whole room erupted. I stayed seated with one nagging question: if Xuan Son had not scored in the first leg at Viet Tri, would the trophy have stayed with Vietnam?

I do not ask that to strip anyone of their joy. But I have followed Asian football long enough to recognise this: a regional trophy can be a warm blanket, and it can also be a curtain. For Vietnamese football right now, it is both at the same time.

No star is ever bigger than the team, even when the star is named Son. And a team that only knows how to lean on one star has never been a big team.

Seven months between two truths

In June 2026, Vietnam closed out the second round of 2026 World Cup qualifying in third place in Group F, behind Iraq and Indonesia, and failed to reach the third round. It is a milestone rarely mentioned, because only seven months later, Kim Sang-sik's side lifted the Southeast Asian trophy.

Those two events sit side by side, but Vietnamese public opinion seems to have kept only the second. The stretch of time between them is what deserves proper analysis.

Kim Sang-sik is South Korean, appointed in mid-2026 after the Vietnam Football Federation parted ways with Philippe Troussier. I read Korean pundits' commentary on him at the time, and most of it was sceptical. He arrived with an unglamorous club record, having coached Jeonbuk through a period of heavy criticism in the K League. Winning Southeast Asia in his first term was a beautiful answer, but it was also the fastest way to close down the hard questions.

In Southeast Asia, Vietnam is no longer the hunter. Vietnam is the hunted. Every opponent in the region parks the bus when they meet Vietnam, and victories only come when the team breaks down that block. This is the kind of match where the best strikers shine and where the tactical system gets hidden.

And right at that moment, Nguyen Xuan Son appeared.

The striker as a shortcut

Xuan Son, born Rafaelson, naturalised and began playing for the Vietnam national team in late 2026. He is the tall, physically imposing centre-forward type: good positioning, two-footed finishing, and, most importantly, able to turn seemingly harmless balls into chances. In a tournament where Vietnam dominated possession against almost every opponent, a striker like that is a gift.

But that is exactly why he became a shortcut.

I rewatched every Vietnam match at the 2026 ASEAN Cup, and what jumped out was not Xuan Son's play but the reaction of the other players whenever they had the ball. Balls were pushed forward faster than usual, sometimes a beat earlier than the moment the midfield was ready to push up. The number of long passes aimed at the centre-forward rose noticeably. The attacking midfielders touched the ball less in the final thirty metres.

This is normal for any team with a top-class striker. The problem lies elsewhere: when that shortcut is blocked, Vietnam has not shown a sufficiently sharp second option.

The second leg of the final is the clearest proof. Xuan Son left the pitch early through injury. Thailand pushed up, applied pressure, and for a spell Vietnam completely lost the ability to hold the ball in the opposition half. The team still won, but it won on character and on moments, not on structure.

When the stands are empty, listen to the ball instead of the shouting. I did that, and the ball told a different story from the terraces.

The frame behind the striker

In midfield, Nguyen Hoang Duc and Do Hung Dung are the familiar pair. Hoang Duc holds the ball well and passes long accurately, but he often drops too deep to receive, stretching the distance between him and the attack. Hung Dung partly compensates with his reading of the game, but age has begun to show in high-speed duels.

Nguyen Quang Hai, once the catalyst of every move, now plays wider or deeper than in his peak years. He remains the player who best understands the rhythm of a match, but that rhythm is rarely read the same way by his younger teammates.

The defence, with Do Duy Manh, Nguyen Thanh Chung and Bui Tien Dung, is solid enough for the regional stage. But they share one weakness: handling the ball under high pressure. When the opponent is Shin Tae-yong's Indonesia or Iraq, sideways passes in the defensive third often become poison.

Notably, Vietnam scored a fair number of goals from set pieces at the ASEAN Cup. Partly thanks to the height of the centre-backs, partly thanks to well-drilled deliveries. But elite Asian football is not decided by corners. It is decided by the ability to control the tempo across ninety minutes.

And that is what Vietnam has lost most since 2026.

The trap of a closed region

The ASEAN Cup is a closed competition. Teams meet constantly, know each other down to every run, and the gap between the leading group is not large. In that context, a striker who knows how to score can create a ten-point difference between two otherwise evenly matched sides.

But Asia is different. There you find Japan, South Korea, Iran, Australia, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Uzbekistan too. Those teams will not let Vietnam hold 60 percent of the ball, will not accept sitting deep after conceding, and will not give Vietnam's midfield time to turn.

Indonesia is the clearest point of comparison. In the same 2026 World Cup qualifying campaign, Indonesia got through the second round and into the third, while Vietnam stopped short. Indonesia did it by a different route: recruiting Indonesian-heritage players from Europe and building a system around them.

I once sat in Jakarta next to a young Indonesian coach and heard a line I have never forgotten: "We don't need to be better than Vietnam. We just need to go further."

Vietnam chose the harder road. That deserves praise. But praise does not change the standings.

I write uncomfortable things so that comfortable people have to reread the match. The 2026 ASEAN Cup is a real triumph, but it is not evidence of progress at continental level. It is evidence that Vietnam is still the strongest team in a small room.

Three specific blind spots

First, transition ability. Vietnam's counter-attacking has never reached the sharpness of peak Park Hang-seo era. Current breaks are often a beat slow, because the midfield drops too deep and there is a lack of accelerating runners from central areas.

Second, building from the back. This is the leftover inheritance from the Troussier era, and it is broken between theory and practice. Vietnamese centre-backs are asked to pass short, but the midfielders do not move enough to create triangles. The result is safe, slow, easily read passes.

Third, squad depth. Beyond Xuan Son and Tien Linh, Vietnam has very few options off the bench that threaten the opponent's goal. When a match needs changing in the second half, Kim Sang-sik tends to swap like for like rather than change the attacking structure.

These three blind spots will not show against Laos or Myanmar. They only show in the third round of World Cup qualifying, where Vietnam no longer has the chance to prove it.

Where I could be wrong

I have to be honest about the weaknesses in my argument.

It is possible Kim Sang-sik understands these problems better than I do, and that the ASEAN Cup was only a stepping stone towards building a new structure for 2030 World Cup qualifying. He has had more than a year in the job, and a head coach usually needs eighteen months to stamp his style on a team.

It is also possible that naturalising Xuan Son is only the first step in a long-term strategy, and the next names will help Vietnam diversify its attacking options.

And it is possible the gap between Southeast Asia and Asia is not as wide as I describe. Look at Thailand in 2026 World Cup qualifying, look at the Philippines with their European players; this region still has representatives who know how to run the long race.

But history teaches me one thing: after every regional trophy won by Vietnamese football, the hard questions tend to be shelved until the next failure arrives. In 2026, in 2026, and again in 2026, the pattern has not changed.

The less shouting there is, the easier it is to tell who is talented and who is merely making noise.

One verdict

If Vietnam does not restructure its midfield and does not reduce its dependence on a single centre-forward, I predict that 2030 World Cup qualifying will repeat the script of 2026. The team will win in Southeast Asia, there will be a few nights of euphoria, and it will stop exactly at the round where fitness and squad depth become decisive.

I could be wrong. But I am writing it down so that in 2030, readers can come back and check.

Accepting being hated is the fee I pay to write the truth nobody commissioned. And that truth, for Vietnamese football, is simply this: the 2026 ASEAN Cup is an achievement worth being proud of, but it does not answer the biggest question. That question still hangs over this football nation, and it will only be answered when Vietnam steps out of the small room of the region.