Fornari at 2.01m and Cong An Nhan Dan's Height Gamble in the 2026-2027 First Division

Nguyen Hoang Anh came off the bench and scored a brace, helping Cong An Nhan Dan beat Long An 2-1 in round 1 of the 2026-2027 First Division. Three points were secured, but if you open the home team's registration list, the foreign player column is empty. Santos Thaileon, the striker who scored 14 goals and won the First Division Golden Boot last season in Quy Nhon United colors, was not named by coach Nguyen Duc Thang. A team aiming for the title started its opening match without a single foreign player, then won thanks to a domestic substitute. I do not fault anyone, I only trace the marks they leave on the pitch. And the marks in round 1 say far more than three points. Cong An Nhan Dan, formerly PVF-CAND, entered the 2026-2027 season with an undisguised ambition: to win the First Division and secure promotion to the V-League. The formula the coaching staff chose is not new in Vietnamese first-division football, which is to invest in quality foreign players up front and use attacking power as the lever for the whole season. Early in the season, the public-security club signed Santos Thaileon, the Brazilian striker who had just enjoyed a breakout campaign with Quy Nhon United, scoring 14 goals, enough to claim the First Division Golden Boot last season. That signing carried a very specific expectation: goals would arrive steadily, and Cong An Nhan Dan would not have to worry much about attacking output across the long race. Football does not run on contracts, it runs on form and fitness at the moment the referee blows the whistle. In the round 1 match against Long An on September 11, Santos Thaileon was absent from the registration list. The specific reason has not been clearly announced, whether injury, form, or a tactical calculation, but the consequence is beyond dispute: Cong An Nhan Dan took the field without any foreign player. The match was a struggle, and only thanks to a brace from substitute striker Nguyen Hoang Anh did the home side win 2-1. Looking at the scoreline, it was a full three points. Looking at the process, it was a warning about how thin the backup plan is. To prepare for a title race spanning the entire season, the Cong An Nhan Dan leadership did not wait. The club signed another Brazilian striker: Gonzalo Fornari. This deal was intended to ensure the team has enough foreign-player options for both the National Cup and the upcoming First Division, while creating internal competition at the striker position. This is a working approach I rate highly in terms of process: never let one position depend on a single individual, and always have a plan B before the registration deadline closes. What makes Fornari a focus of attention is not his past goal tally, but his height. The 26-year-old stands 2.01m tall, the tallest among foreign players currently active in both the First Division and the V-League. In a league where defenses often sit deep and play long balls, a striker over two meters tall is a clear tactical weapon: he can hold up play, contest aerial balls, stretch opposing center-backs, and create space for attacking runners behind him. Last season, Fornari played for Busan IPark in K-League 2 and scored 7 goals. This is a point I pay special attention to, because I have followed Korean football for many years. K-League 2 is a high-intensity physical environment, where strikers must adapt to dense tackling rhythm and disciplined, organized defenses. A player forged in that environment carries a very different physical and mental profile from foreign players arriving directly from Brazil. That does not guarantee goals, but it guarantees the ability to absorb contact, a quality that First Division strikers in Vietnam are tested on every matchday. When I observe a player coming from Korean football, I always ask whether he can maintain discipline in off-ball movement, something V-League and First Division center-backs are very good at reading. The timing of the Fornari signing is also worth reading closely. The National Cup has a deadline for replacing and adding players at 3pm on September 17. The First Division has a deadline of 3pm on October 15. The window between these two markers gives coach Nguyen Duc Thang enough room to experiment and consider, but not as much as outsiders might think. Cong An Nhan Dan will host Hue at home in the National Cup qualifier on October 6. On October 11, the team travels to Khanh Hoa in round 2 of the First Division. That means by the National Cup match, Thang still has nearly a month to decide; by the First Division round 2 match, time is nearly up. Every red card is a verdict written several plays in advance, and every foreign-player registration decision is the same: its consequences only surface after the season has run several rounds. The core problem Thang must solve is a registration puzzle, not a purely tactical one. The National Cup and the First Division are two arenas with different foreign-player quotas and rules, and the club holds at least two Brazilian strikers with contrasting qualities. Santos Thaileon is the proven model in the First Division itself, a man who scored 14 goals and knows how to find the net under Vietnamese league conditions. Gonzalo Fornari is the promising model with a towering physical edge but not a single minute of proof in Vietnam. Placed side by side, this is a contest between proven certainty and unmeasured potential. To understand why Fornari's height should not be read as a guarantee of goals, look at the most recent case of a tall striker arriving in Vietnam. In the 2026-2026 season, Nam Dinh had Kyle Hudlin, the English striker standing 2.06m, even taller than Fornari. Hudlin's resume was impressive: he scored a brace in the 2026 Super Cup match, though Nam Dinh lost 2-3 to Cong An Ha Noi; he scored a brace against the Vietnam national team in a friendly his side won 4-0; he scored in a 1-3 defeat away to Gamba Osaka in the 2026-2026 AFC Champions League. Those numbers would catch any scout's eye, and were the reason many believed a striker over two meters tall would dominate defenses. But when the 2026-2026 V-League began, Kyle Hudlin scored no goals in 5 matches, and soon after left the club due to injury. His 2.06m height did not save him from being neutralized by V-League defenses, nor did it help him adapt to the pace and defensive organization of Vietnamese football. This is the lesson I want to place beside Fornari's signing: in football, height is a parameter, not a promise. A tall striker is only useful when the system around him knows how to deliver the ball to the right spot, and when he himself is quick enough to escape the tight marking of center-backs. The counterintuitive angle lies here. A significant share of observers view Cong An Nhan Dan recruiting a 2.01m striker as a sensible move to solve the attacking problem. But if you look at how Vietnamese leagues organize their defenses, an excessively tall striker can become a tactical burden. He slows down quick counterattacks, demands the ball be delivered precisely, and is often less agile in tight spaces. For a team targeting the title, title pressure is even greater: every draw is seen as dropped points, and a tall lone striker is easily isolated if the midfield does not supply enough balls. There is another aspect few mention, which is that tall strikers often become targets of tactical fouls. Over my career watching matches, I have noticed that physically dominant center-forwards are routinely handled by opposing center-backs with continuous contact, shirt-pulling, and blocking. To understand a league, read the disciplinary record rather than the standings, and the disciplinary record will show how many fouls a 2.01m striker absorbs per match. If Fornari cannot adapt to how Vietnamese referees manage matches and to the contact threshold of center-backs, he will lose the ball, lose position, and gradually lose confidence. That is the kind of collapse that goal numbers never fully reflect. It is also worth remembering that Santos Thaileon has not disappeared. He remains part of the club's plan, and his absence in round 1 may simply be a stopgap solution. Fornari's signing need not replace Thaileon, but could create healthy competition at the striker position. But that competition is only valuable if coach Nguyen Duc Thang chooses the right man for the right arena. Data is never sent off, and the data says Thaileon has proven his scoring ability in the First Division, while Fornari has only proven he has height. Those are two kinds of evidence at entirely different levels. One more point I always stress when analyzing personnel decisions in Vietnamese football: environmental factors change player behavior more than people think. A striker who played in K-League 2 needs time to get used to the pitch, the climate, the tempo, and even the way Vietnamese referees issue cards. The window from now until 3pm on October 15 may be enough for Fornari to prove himself, or it may pass without him finding his rhythm. For Cong An Nhan Dan, this window is worth gold, because the main arena deciding promotion does not allow the club too much experimentation. From now until 3pm on October 15, coach Nguyen Duc Thang has a stretch of time to answer a simple but weighty question: choose Santos Thaileon, who has proven his scoring ability in the Vietnamese First Division, or bet on the height of Gonzalo Fornari, the tallest foreign player in Vietnam but without a single minute of proof? The answer will not lie in the height on paper, but in specific plays in the upcoming matches against Hue and Khanh Hoa. For a club targeting the title, sometimes the hardest decision is not whom to sign, but whom to register. And the history of Kyle Hudlin at Nam Dinh remains there as a reminder that height, by itself, scores no goals.