Four V-League Clubs Fall in the 2026-2027 National Cup Qualifiers: When Survival Matters More Than Silverware

In the 94th minute at Quy Nhon stadium, the referee pointed to the penalty spot. Stand B was almost empty, and no cheer went up. Hoang Anh Gia Lai pulled one back to 2-3 from the spot, but the match had been decided in the 77th minute, when Hung Yen scored their third goal. More than 700 kilometres away, at Lach Tray, a striker who had joined Thep Can Tho only days earlier, Thaileon, scored the only goal of the first half to beat Hai Phong 0-1. In Thanh Hoa, the hosts lost 0-2 at home to Becamex TP.HCM — a club just relegated and now a promotion candidate.

Eight qualifying matches of the 2026-2027 National Cup, played across one weekend, ended with a number worth pausing over: four of the five V-League representatives that took the field lost, and three of them lost at home. Only Bac Ninh escaped, beating first-division Long An 3-2 away.

I have followed the National Cup for many seasons, and I have learned one thing: to understand a tournament, do not read the league table alone — read the flight schedules and the hotel bills.

A secondary competition treated as secondary

The National Cup has long held a secondary status within Vietnam's professional football system. Its knockout format makes it attractive to neutral viewers, but it is a headache for coaching staffs. Every advancing round means another trip, more accommodation costs, more injury risk for key players — while the financial reward does not cover the outlay.

For clubs without title ambitions in V-League, the arithmetic is clear: survival matters more than anything. A place in the top flight is worth several seasons of budget. A National Cup final is not.

That lukewarm approach creates an opening, and first-division clubs — sides hungry for prestige, for attention, for one big match to prove themselves — walk straight through it. They field their strongest line-ups. They travel at their own expense. They play as if this were the most important match of the season.

Timing deserves a mention too. The Cup qualifiers are placed right at the start of the V-League season, when clubs are still assembling squads, still experimenting, still wrestling with fitness plans for a long campaign. Putting a knockout tie at that moment is like asking someone to sprint at the twentieth metre of a marathon. Nobody wants to empty the tank.

Thanh Hoa: an old invoice, a fresh wound

Thanh Hoa embody this logic most clearly. The club from Thanh Hoa province only learned it still existed just before the 2026-2027 V-League kicked off, with a squad worn thin because there was not enough money to retain key players or sign replacements.

Then FIFA knocked. On 16 September 2026, the federation ordered the club to pay more than 305,000 USD — roughly 8 billion VND — to Rimario Gordon, after the Jamaican striker filed a complaint. If the matter is not resolved within 45 days of receiving the document, the club will be barred from registering new players for three transfer windows. The awkward part: the dispute dates back to the previous sponsor's tenure, while the club has since been handed over to a new backer.

No coach solves that with a tactical diagram. A club worrying about debt repayment will not go all-in on a cup tie. The 0-2 defeat to Becamex TP.HCM is a logical outcome, not an accident. The visitors did not win through luck; they won because their squad was no weaker than the hosts', and they played with far greater determination.

"The German scout knocked once, and I opened an entire archive of unpublished recruitment files." But Thanh Hoa's most worrying file right now is not on the pitch. It is in the accounting office.

Hoang Anh Gia Lai: when home is absent

Hoang Anh Gia Lai lost 2-3 to Hung Yen at Quy Nhon, a borrowed temporary home ground. Pleiku stadium is undergoing pitch renovation because drainage fails whenever heavy rain sets in.

Losing your home ground costs more than a playing surface. It costs ritual. No familiar drums, no familiar stands, none of that sense of "this is our land" — the thing every club clings to in hard times.

On the pitch, the script was unsurprising. Coach Le Quang Trai's side fell 1-3 by the 77th minute before pulling one back to 2-3 from a 90+4 penalty. The squad is rated weaker than last season, and Hung Yen played with far greater hunger. After two straight defeats at the start of the 2026-2027 V-League, relegation pressure is pressing hard on the mountain-town club.

"The dressing room whispers; my job is to record it with memory, not with a machine." And what I heard from sides like Hoang Anh Gia Lai was not resignation. It was fatigue — the fatigue of a team that knows it must fight a survival battle every single season.

Hai Phong and Hong Linh Ha Tinh: quiet defeats

Hai Phong lost 0-1 at home to Thep Can Tho, a club that has just moved its "registered address" from Quang Ninh to the Mekong Delta and had lost its opening match of the 2026-2027 first division. The scorer was Thaileon, a striker who had joined only days earlier.

A goal from a newcomer in the first half, against a V-League side playing at home, says a good deal about the balance of motivation that day. Thep Can Tho did not come to Lach Tray as guests. They came to take a place in the next round.

Hong Linh Ha Tinh went further, dragging Phu Tho into a penalty shootout after a 0-0 draw over 90 minutes, then losing 2-3. This was the kind of match both teams understood was in nobody's season plan. It was simply a round to get through.

What Hai Phong and Hong Linh Ha Tinh share: their starts to the 2026-2027 V-League were not bad, with one defeat and one win. Their Cup exits raised few eyebrows, because both are pooling resources for the relegation fight.

Voices from the stands

On Hai Phong and Hoang Anh Gia Lai fan forums, the notable reaction was not anger. It was a tired indifference. Very few called for the coach's head. Most wrote that they understood why their club could not go all-out in the National Cup.

That indifference is more worrying than a defeat. An angry stand still means a stand that cares. A stand that understands its team's reasons too well has learned not to expect — and that is far harder to repair than a lost league place.

The contrarian read: an early exit can be a gift

A convenient reading is spreading online: an early Cup exit is good for V-League clubs, because it lets them focus on the main front. For Hoang Anh Gia Lai, that argument sounds reasonable. For Thanh Hoa, it is nearly correct.

But I refuse to turn every defeat into a strategy. That narrative converts weakness into wisdom, and it erases the work of first-division sides who fielded their strongest line-ups, who travelled, who won.

This is also where data becomes useless when misused. Metrics such as PPDA or xG in a Cup qualifier measure almost nothing, because both teams may rotate and pursue different objectives. "Digitisation did not make me faster, but it forced me to be more honest with every number." A number detached from context is just a bare number.

More broadly, fairy tales from the lower divisions are consumed and then discarded. A win like Becamex TP.HCM's or Thep Can Tho's is celebrated for two days, then vanishes from the pages once the V-League returns. Structural reform of resource distribution — the thing that could actually keep first-division clubs alive — never arrives.

"The stands may be empty, but the heartbeat of a community never stops." The saddest part of the last qualifying round is that those stands really were empty, and nobody at the organisers' table treated that as a problem to solve.

What to watch next

In the next round, Becamex TP.HCM and Thep Can Tho advance as the obstacles nobody wants. The real question lies elsewhere: will Thanh Hoa settle the 305,000 USD before the 45-day deadline, or will they enter the next transfer window with both hands tied?

As for the National Cup, a competition respected only when people have nothing more important to do, it will remain a door that first-division clubs can knock on. "When technology changed how football is told, I quietly changed how I listen." But some knocks need no technology to be heard.