2026-2027 National Cup: Four V-League Representatives Fall and the Unspoken Priority Choice

The stands in Quy Nhon on Sunday afternoon were sparse. The banners of the mountain-town supporters were still brought along, but they sat scattered, their cheers not thick enough to cover the pitch. This is Hoang Anh Gia Lai's temporary home while Pleiku Stadium undergoes drainage renovation, after heavy rains left the turf badly flooded. On the pitch, the hosts let Hung Yen overturn the game. By the 77th minute the score was 1-3. It took until the 90+4th minute for a penalty to narrow it to 2-3. The final whistle blew, and it seemed no applause was given to the losing side. That was one of eight qualifying matches of the 2026-2027 National Cup played over the weekend. Looking at the wider picture, four of the five representatives currently playing in the V-League lost to teams from the First Division. Three of them lost at home. The only exception was Bac Ninh, who won 3-2 away at Long An. The rest read like a grim bulletin for the group seen as favourites. I write for those who stay behind in the dressing room after the stadium lights have gone out. The real story of the National Cup qualifying round is not in the scoreline, but in how much of their squad and how much calculation each team brought into the match. The National Cup has long been a side stage for most V-League clubs. The deeper you go, the greater the travel and accommodation costs, while the squad must be split across two competitions. For teams without title ambitions, surviving in the V-League matters far more than a cup trophy. That indifferent approach is precisely what opens the door for First Division sides, who enter with far greater determination. Thanh Hoa is the clearest example. The team from Thanh region only learned it still existed right before the 2026-2027 V-League kicked off. A limited squad, with funds insufficient to keep key players or sign new ones. At home, they lost 0-2 to Becamex Ho Chi Minh City, a side just relegated and now a promotion candidate. The opponent was no weaker in personnel, played with more resolve, and won without much difficulty. But Thanh Hoa's worries do not stay neatly on the pitch. FIFA has ordered the club to pay more than 305,000 USD, roughly 8 billion dong, to Jamaican striker Rimario Gordon after the player filed a complaint. The document was sent to the club on September 16. If the matter is not resolved within 45 days, the Thanh club will be banned from registering new players for three transfer windows. The knot lies in this: the debt arose during the tenure of the previous sponsor, while the club has now been transferred to a new one. A problem of the past suddenly becomes a burden of the present, right when the club needs every dong to get through the season. And the cup exit, in that situation, looks more like a release than a tragedy. Hoang Anh Gia Lai took another path to the same destination. After two straight defeats to open the 2026-2027 V-League, the mountain-town club entered the National Cup with a squad even thinner than last season. Against a Hung Yen rich in ambition, the men under coach Le Quang Trai fell quickly. Without the familiar support at Pleiku, Trai's side also lost the emotional anchor that has been part of their strength for years. Having to leave Pleiku because the pitch drains poorly is a small detail that says a lot. A major club of Vietnamese football must borrow someone else's ground, losing home advantage just when it needs a foothold most. For a collective that relies on spirit and local identity, playing away from home almost removes one of its tactical weapons. In 2026, Pitch 9 planted a question in me: where does football beat when no one scores? Games like Hoang Anh Gia Lai against Hung Yen, or Thanh Hoa against Becamex Ho Chi Minh City, partly answer it: it beats in the preparation, in the registration list, in which team actually sends its strongest men onto the pitch. Relegation pressure is not only about points. It is the story of contracts about to expire, of late wages, of players' families waiting out there. In an empty dressing room, I heard a match that has never been broadcast. Those matches have no cameras, yet they decide who gets to stay in the profession. Hai Phong is the case that irritates viewers most. Playing at home, the port-city club lost 0-1 to Thep Can Tho. The opponent had just moved its registration from Quang Ninh to the western capital, and had just lost its opening match of the 2026-2027 First Division. Yet only days after joining the team, striker Thaileon scored the only goal of the match in the first half. A striker who arrived days earlier, not yet settled, was the one who decided the fate of the match. That detail says much about how much focus the home side brought into the game. When a collective plays as if saving energy for a bigger goal, an individual eager to prove himself scoring is an inevitable consequence. Hong Linh Ha Tinh went one step further by dragging the match to a penalty shootout. After a 0-0 draw over 90 minutes at Phu Tho, the visitors lost 2-3 from the spot. A goalless draw followed by defeat in a nerve test is usually seen as bad luck. But for a V-League team planning for the long haul, stopping early in the National Cup opens a lighter schedule for the survival race. Across the four defeats, a common pattern emerges. The V-League teams almost all rotated their squads, held back key players, and gave young or substitute players a run. In return, the First Division sides fielded their strongest lineups, because for them a win over a V-League representative is a morale boost and a chance to prove their worth. The gap in quality was erased by the gap in motivation. This is not new. Vietnamese football has seen First Division sides topple big names in the National Cup for many seasons. But the frequency in 2026-2027 is worth pausing over. Four of five representatives, three defeats at home, is a signal of resource polarisation rather than merely a matter of tactics on one afternoon. There is a paradox here. The National Cup is run as a prestigious stage, yet for many teams it is a burden. The prize money is not enough to cover costs, the interleaved schedule forces clubs to weigh things up, and the trophy does not help much with the most important goal, survival. When the reward does not match the price paid, people choose to let go. On the scheduling side, the National Cup sitting in the middle of the early season forces teams to choose. Early season is when fitness foundations and squad cohesion are not yet at their peak, and an extra midweek match can trigger a knock-on effect in the following rounds. For teams with thin squad depth, every cup match is a gamble with the intactness of the whole first team. That is precisely why Bac Ninh's 3-2 win at Long An deserves to be taken seriously. They are the only V-League representative to advance, and they did it away from home. The difference is not in class, but in Bac Ninh walking onto the pitch with the attitude of a team that wants to go through. The First Division sides enter with a different drive. For them, a place in the next round of the National Cup is not only honour, but prize money, media attention, and a chance for players to catch the eye of V-League clubs. A win over a top team creates value far beyond three points in the First Division table. As someone working in Shenzhen, reporting on football for Chinese readers, I often have to explain why Vietnamese clubs handle the National Cup so differently from cup competitions in Europe. The answer lies in economics. A mid-table V-League club has a budget not equal to a small fraction of a lower-league team in Europe. Every long trip is real money, every extra match is real injury risk. The line between chasing a trophy and preserving fragile survival becomes clearer than ever. The familiar framing is to treat these defeats as shocks, as evidence of decline. But look closely, and they are not shocks. They are the result of a calculated choice. For Thanh Hoa, a club facing a FIFA sanction and the risk of a transfer ban, pouring energy into the V-League is a life-or-death decision. For Hoang Anh Gia Lai, a club that lost its first two games and has a thinner squad than last year, the National Cup is something that can be set aside. For Hai Phong and Hong Linh Ha Tinh, teams whose V-League start has not been bad, stopping early in the cup is also within expectations. The blind spot of outside observers is judging by the scoreline, while inside the dressing room people count by days off, by flights, and by how many players are still fit. A goal is only the rest that ends a long song sung by eleven people. And for small clubs, that song lasts a whole season, not a single cup match. However noisy the transfer market gets, the footfall of those who stay does not change. What stands out is not that the First Division sides won, but how they won: with determination, with their strongest lineups, by treating this match as the opportunity of an entire season. Meanwhile, the V-League clubs walked onto the pitch with the mindset of people who had already mapped out a retreat. I have walked through small pitches, big pitches, and one stumble to learn how to count the rhythm with my heart. The rhythm of this year's National Cup qualifying round is not in the goals, but in the silence before the ball rolls: the silence of a team that already knows where it is going after the whistle. What remains open is whether the organisers see this signal. A competition the big teams do not want to win will soon lose its appeal, and the small teams will become heroes of a stage they themselves are not sure they want to win. What is worth discussing is not that the V-League teams lost, but that they were forced to choose. A stage is only truly valuable when people want to win it for its own sake, not because they have to play out an obligation. The National Cup needs a reform of its format and prize value, so that when the big teams go for it, they no longer feel they must save energy for a longer season ahead. As for the First Division sides, the ones who won this weekend, they deserve more than a place in the next round: they deserve respect.