Vietnam Youth Academies: When 'Academies' Are Just Advertising Boards and Grassroots Coaches Are Forgotten

The 2026-2026 season just ended with a number that kept me awake: out of 26 goals scored by players under 21 in the V-League, 19 came from foreign players or overseas Vietnamese. I sat back in front of my screen, reopened the Opta statistics table, and asked myself: are we developing youth players or are we raising semi-finished products for others? The context I want to discuss is not a specific match, but a reality that has persisted for a decade. Youth academies have sprouted like mushrooms after rain, from academies of former legends to community football centers. The advertising is beautiful, the facilities are spacious, but look at the output: the Vietnam U23 team at the 2026 Southeast Asian Championship had only 3 players truly developed from the domestic youth system, the rest were players from First Division teams or were called up as supplements from clubs racing for the championship. What the whole football community is denying is: we don't lack money, we lack a system. Every youth academy in Vietnam currently has at least one FIFA-standard artificial turf field, a modern gym, and a nutrition team. But ask the grassroots coaches - those who directly teach players aged 10-14 - how much they are paid. I followed a C-license coaching course at the District 9 sports center in Ho Chi Minh City in March last year. Students had to pay 12 million VND out of pocket for a 3-month course, while their starting salary after graduation was only 7 million VND per month. They have to teach extra private youth football classes to make a living, which means they don't have time to study tactics or watch videos of international matches. I recall a conversation with an assistant coach at the Binh Duong Club youth academy in July 2026. He said the 2026-born batch had 14 players, but only 2 were promoted to the U19 team for the national tournament. The rest were cut not because they lacked talent, but because the U19 team only had a budget for 18 registered slots, and the remaining 16 slots were reserved for players recruited from other provinces - players discovered by the club's scouts through amateur tournaments. They bring in players who have already been 'polished' by other academies, while neglecting the very products they paid to develop. This is the vicious cycle of Vietnamese youth football: clubs don't trust their own system, so they buy products from others, and because they buy, they don't invest in their own system. And so the cycle repeats with no way out. Now, I will offer a perspective that might get me labeled as reactionary: perhaps we are wrong to put all the blame on the clubs. Look at the Japanese or Korean model, where high schools play the role of the main youth development center, and professional clubs are just the final destination. In Vietnam, we are trying to transplant the European academy model into an education system where football is not a core subject. High school students cannot train twice a day like youth academies in Western Europe, due to exam pressure and family expectations. Therefore, our youth academies only attract students who have dropped out or have no clear academic direction - this is the tactical blind spot that no one wants to mention. Let me tell you about a specific case. In September last year, I had the opportunity to attend a training session of the U15 batch at a well-known academy in Hanoi. The session lasted 90 minutes, with 60 minutes of physical conditioning and endurance running, 20 minutes of basic passing drills, and the final 10 minutes was a small-sided game. There were no tactical drills about pressing, no drills about building up from the back, no drills about spatial positioning. I asked the head coach of this batch - a former national team player - why there were no tactical drills. He replied: 'The kids still need to learn how to run and pass, tactics are the business of the U19 team.' That answer reminded me of my own mistake at the 2026 World Cup, when I declared that no team could win the World Cup with less than 45% possession. I was wrong, and I learned that modern football doesn't divide into separate phases. Tactics must be taught from when a player is 10 years old, through small exercises about space and decision-making time. But our grassroots coaches are not trained to do that. Based on my experience following matches at 8 World Cups and 8 Olympic Games, I can confidently state one thing: no country has successfully developed youth football without a systematic grassroots coaching program. Germany has 54,000 A and B licensed coaches, Japan has 85,000 C-licensed coaches and above, while Vietnam has only about 3,200 licensed coaches, and most of them hold the C license - the lowest level. We are laying the foundation for a building without architects. We invest in fields, equipment, and advertising, but forget that the teacher is the decisive factor in a young player's development. I'm not saying that all youth academies in Vietnam are commercial gimmicks. There are a few notable exceptions, like the PVF academy in Van Giang, Hung Yen, where coaches are sent to Japan for study every year, and they have a tactical curriculum specifically designed for each age group. But PVF is the exception, not the rule. Most other youth academies, especially those opened by former stars, are just places where parents send their children hoping that one day they will become professional players. They charge 5-7 million VND per month in tuition, promise a bright future, but have no real commitment to training quality. I have witnessed countless cases where a 16-year-old player signed a contract with a professional club, but after 2 years without playing, was pushed to a First Division team, then disappeared from the football map. That is not youth development; that is a machine that grinds dreams. Now, I want to make a proposal that might get me called a troublemaker: we should close half of the current youth academies and redirect those resources to training grassroots coaches. Instead of building 10 more artificial turf fields, send 100 young coaches to Japan or Korea for 6 months of study. Instead of buying expensive data analysis equipment, invest in building a unified national youth training curriculum, based on the attacking football philosophy we want to build for the national team. I know this proposal will face opposition from those making money from youth academies, but I am never confident in my pre-match predictions – I am only confident in my doubts. And my doubts tell me: if we don't change our approach to youth football, then 10 years from now, we will still be sitting here complaining that the national team doesn't have quality young players. When I wrote about 3-6-1 in 2026, I wasn't picking a fight – I was describing what the whole stadium was denying. And now, I am also describing what the entire football community is denying: we are chasing advertising boards, while those who actually create players - the grassroots coaches - are being abandoned. When the noise fades, the pitch becomes a laboratory – and the myth of youth academies begins to crack. Look at the numbers: in the past 10 years, we have spent over 2,000 billion VND on youth academies, but the number of young players truly capable of playing in the V-League has only increased from 12 to 15 players. That is not an investment; that is systematic waste. The question I want to pose at the end of this article is not 'what should we do next', but 'do we have the courage to admit that we have been wrong for the past 10 years?'. Because only when we admit that the European-style academy model doesn't fit the Vietnamese context can we begin to build our own model. And I believe that model will start with small classes, with grassroots coaches who are paid fairly, and tactical lesson plans designed for specific age groups. That will be a quiet revolution, but it will change Vietnamese football from the roots. I just hope that we will start that revolution before it's too late.