Vietnamese Volleyball and the Depth Problem: From Chi Lang Stadium to the Continental Arena

I sat in the stands of Chi Lang Stadium on a late summer afternoon, as the stadium lights began to flicker on row by row. The arena was almost empty, with only a few workers adjusting the advertising boards and a solitary figure crouching in the corner of the court. That was a young spiker from the home team, just dropped from the lineup for that evening's friendly match. He sat there, saying nothing, staring at the court as if counting all the shoe marks left on it. People turn on the stadium lights to watch volleyball; I turn on the lights to see the hidden corners. After nearly 50 years of writing about sports, I have never found a match more interesting than what happens before the match begins. These days, Vietnamese volleyball is at a rare turning point. The women's national team just reached the semifinals of a major international tournament, the first time in more than a decade. The media called it a miracle, a fairy tale come true. But I have witnessed too many fairy tales shattering the moment the stadium lights go out. What Vietnamese volleyball lacks is not emotion, not passion, but roster depth — a concept that sounds dry but is a matter of life and death for an entire volleyball nation. I remember the 2026 season, when the Vietnamese women's team competed in the Asian Volleyball Championship in Thailand. The starting lineup featured a dynamic attacking combination, with two star hitters in peak form. But when one of them suffered an ankle injury in the quarterfinal, the entire tactical system suddenly became poor. Flat approaches could not solve the tall opposing block. On the bench, no replacement option met the demands of the match. The coach was forced to use a young athlete called up to the national team only a few months earlier, a girl still immature in international experience. The match ended 0-3, and in the stands, I saw a Vietnamese fan crying with her face in her hands. Winter has no audience, but volleyball is still hot — only the heart is frozen. That loss did not come from any individual's incompetence. It came from a chronic disease of Vietnamese volleyball: we invest too much in polishing players to shine at a few tournaments, while forgetting that a strong team is never built on one generation of players, but on a system that produces players. Look at Asia's leading volleyball nations like Japan and Thailand. They maintain strength across generations thanks to serious youth development. The Japanese have volleyball centers in high schools across the country, where 16-year-old girls are drilled in foundational skills as a given. Thailand has a national league where young clubs regularly have the opportunity to play against the national team. What does Vietnam have? We have exceptional players like Luong Dinh Phat, Tran Thi Thanh Thuy — talents who rose, somewhat by luck, from an environment with many limitations. But behind them is an abyss. Based on my experience following matches over many years — from domestic A-liga games to international tournaments — I notice a recurring pattern: Vietnamese volleyball wins by spirit and loses by depth. At the 2026 Asian Youth Championship, the U20 women's team had a promising run, but when facing U20 Thailand, the gap in physical condition and substitute skills became too obvious. Our young spikers made beautiful plays, but when the match stretched to a fifth set, they no longer had the strength to maintain proper attacking form. Across the net, the Thai coach brought in four different players in succession, and each one fulfilled a clear role. We do not have that kind of bench. This story is not just about tactics. It is viewed from a human perspective: girls stepping out of rural villages, orphaned, mocked by friends for choosing volleyball instead of going to university. I interviewed a 19-year-old spiker in Quang Ninh who said that for the first three years of training, every time she went home, her grandmother would cry, asking who would marry a girl who plays volleyball. Then she played a great match, was called up to the national team, and the whole village changed its attitude. But roster depth is not built on inspirational stories. It is built with a system. People often compare Vietnamese volleyball to soccer, because both sports have stars who made history. But I think that comparison misses the unique nature of volleyball. A volleyball match cannot end in a draw. Every set has a winner and a loser. And within a set, substitutions happen in just a few seconds between rallies — there is no long break to adjust mentally. Volleyball demands absolute stability at every position, and that makes roster depth paramount. A strong volleyball team does not only have five good players, but twelve players ready to perform at not-too-much-lower quality. Look at the journey of the Vietnamese women's team at SEA V.League 2026, where we convincingly won the title against Thailand at home. I was at Phu Tho Gymnasium that day, witnessing an unprecedentedly fervent atmosphere. Fans carried red flags with yellow stars, singing eternal songs in the stands. When Tran Thi Thanh Thuy scored the decisive point in the final set, the whole arena exploded. It was a moment of faith, of national solidarity, of what sport does best — bringing pride to millions of people. But look at our bench during that match. Besides Thanh Thuy, who could replace the star spiker if she got injured? Who could take over the backcourt defense when the liberos lost their rhythm? At one moment, I saw the coach glance at the bench with barely concealed anxiety — an image I will never forget. These days, with volleyball receiving more attention than ever, I receive many calls from colleagues asking about prospects in upcoming tournaments. Can the women's team break into Asia's top four? Can the men repeat their SEA Games miracle? I always answer carefully: it depends on whether we dare to bet on the young generation. The Vietnam Volleyball Federation has recently taken important steps, such as opening talent-training classes in many provinces and organizing youth tournaments on a larger scale. But I still see an impatience, the way adults want stars to sprout instantly. They call up 17-year-old girls to the national team, expect them to explode after one season, and when that does not happen, they are sent home like defective goods. I have seen too many young talents burned that way. Another story I often tell young colleagues is about a boy named Tuan, a young player from Ben Tre men's volleyball team. In 2026, when the V-League was suspended due to the pandemic, Tuan went home to help his family sell noodles. I did not meet him at the court, but at a street-side eatery near the bus station. He told me: 'Uncle, I don't know what I can do besides volleyball. But every time I touch the ball, I forget everything.' Tuan never made it to the national team, but his story haunts me still. It reminds me that behind all the statistics, the attack percentages, and block efficiencies, there are hundreds of thousands of people living and dying for this sport. In 2026, I was heavily criticized when I said on air during a youth tournament that a 16-year-old player had made a reception error because 'she was not experienced enough.' Online mobs said I was too harsh on children. But I said that because I saw an entire system that had failed her. She was not trained from an early age in a professional, systematic environment. She did not have a coach competent enough to teach her proper movement. Being talented in a deprived training environment is a gift, but it is not a foundation strong enough for the international stage. When she grows up and has to compete against opponents who have been trained since age 10 in modern volleyball academies, the gap is not just physical — it is a whole professional culture. One of the biggest blind spots among those running Vietnamese volleyball is the idolization of victories in friendly tournaments and domestic competitions. I have seen a team that was dominant domestically, winning the national championship for years, go to an Asian club tournament and lose comprehensively to clubs from Korea and Taiwan. Their players said they were 'shocked' by the opponents' speed and endurance. But how can you be shocked when that level has been so clearly demonstrated on television? The truth is that we still do not have an everyday training environment competitive enough. We train with each other until we know each other's moves by heart, and when we go international, everything becomes alien. Let me use a small detail from the Vietnamese women's match against Japan at the 2026 Asian Championship. We won the fourth set spectacularly with a series of strong serves by Nguyen Thi Nga. The stands shook, and fans began to dream of the impossible. But in the fifth set, our hitters began to tire, their attacking movements no longer reached the same height, and Japan immediately exploited the opportunity to score decisive points with soft tips. They did not need power to beat us; they just needed our players to enter the fifth set. At that moment, I remembered what a Japanese coach once told me over lunch in Bangkok: 'Volleyball is not about who plays better, but who makes fewer mistakes when the match gets tense.' The Japanese team has a high-intensity physical training system applied to every age group. They sprint in recovery sessions, they eat according to diets calculated by the gram. Our girls train hard, but they do not have specialized strength-training facilities at every training center. This leads to an uncomfortable argument: we are living in an illusion about the power of the Vietnamese spirit. Of course, spirit matters. I have seen matches where the fighting will of Vietnamese girls made opponents tremble. But spirit cannot rescue a situation when strength is exhausted, when technique degrades due to fatigue, when the block cannot jump high enough. And when spirit is the only thing we rely on, every defeat becomes a psychological shock. I have seen players cry in the locker room because they felt they had fought with all their might and still could not win, not understanding why. Coaches should have told them they lost not because of lack of effort, but because of lack of a system. However, I am not here to deliver a gloomy message. On the contrary, I believe we are entering a period with the potential for the greatest changes yet. Audience interest in volleyball is surging, with new sponsors willing to invest in women's teams. International club tournaments are no longer unfamiliar to fans. And on training courts, I see more and more young faces, agile, with eyes full of desire. The remaining question is whether administrators have the courage to look beyond their terms in office. If I could say one thing to those running Vietnamese volleyball, I would say this: give up the short-sighted mindset and look at the roots. Do not just celebrate a SEA Games victory. Ask: can our youth development system produce a generation more polished than the current one? Do not just reward stars; reward the coaches, the silent ones who teach children how to move, pass, and read the game. Every contract is a farewell, every debut ceremony is a promise of rebirth. And the rebirth promise of Vietnamese volleyball can only be written when we accept sacrificing immediate victories. Imagine a vision: in 2032, a Vietnamese women's volleyball team steps onto an Olympic court with six players, each the product of a seamless training system from secondary school. They do not burn out at 24; they peak at 27-28 like Brazilian or American players. They can substitute seamlessly when one gets injured, because the replacement is not just a backup option, but a child trained in the same coaching philosophy for ten years. Can that happen? Certainly, if we start today. The white nights of Moscow taught me that volleyball never turns off the lights. Like football, volleyball is a sport of endless cycles. Every four years, a generation of athletes is replaced by a new one. The venue may change names, the jerseys may change colors, but human aspiration is constant. I sit here, at 64, with graying hair and callused hands that have held a microphone for so many years, still believing it. Vietnamese volleyball does not need a magic miracle. It needs an awakening about roster depth. And when that awakening comes, it will not only honor the title-winning players, but also the girls in rural areas who deserve to fight for their dreams properly. I want to end with an image deeply engraved in my mind: one early morning at the National Sports Training Center in Hanoi, I saw a young female player practicing approach jumps alone in front of a dusty board. No coach beside her, no one counting. She repeated the movement, hundreds of times, until it was perfect. I approached and asked: 'Why do you train so hard?' The girl wiped sweat from her forehead and looked at me seriously: 'Because if I don't do a hundred today, tomorrow I will fail in a match. I don't want my sisters to cry because of a bad pass.' When I heard that, I thought Vietnamese volleyball still has hope. As long as girls like her are placed in a proper system. Standing between the running track and the stands long enough, I know a record does not belong to one person alone. When Tran Thi Thanh Thuy hit the decisive spike to win the title, that record belonged to the teachers who taught her the first skills, to a federation that did not give up through difficulties, and to all the fishing-village girls who never once appeared on television. That is the beauty of sport — it is a universal language of all destinies. And in that language, Vietnamese volleyball is still searching for new words to tell stories about people overcoming adversity. Decades from now, when I can no longer sit in the stands, I hope what I write today will be a small document for future generations to see: our generation saw the big problems clearly, and although we did not have enough courage to change everything, we dared to speak up. Because one of the things I have learned after nearly half a century in this profession is: the match ends, but the stadium still echoes in me like a private space. And the microphone never goes off. Let me return once more to the issue I raised: roster depth. At a training session at Ba Ria Gymnasium, I asked a coach who manages young age groups whether the kids could be ready for international competition by 2028. He smiled bitterly, saying: 'We teach them technique, but they lack competitive exposure. Each year there are only a few youth tournaments, and the quality of refereeing is also a problem.' Hearing that, I suddenly remembered young Thai players competing weekly in the professional volleyball league with Brazilian imports. They are tempered every day, while our young players only play a few matches each month. There is no formula other than creating a high-intensity competitive environment. I offer some advice that may displease some: allocate a significant budget to send youth teams to international tournaments, even if they lose. Do not treat loss on the continental stage as a disaster; treat it as tuition. Experience cannot be taught in a closed gym; it only comes when people face reality. Our youth teams are sometimes overly confident at home, and when they go abroad, they feel lost. I regret not saying this clearly ten years ago, when a generation of talented players never had the chance to fully realize their ambitions. I am ending this article at a café near Noi Bai Airport, before my flight to Da Nang. Outside, the late autumn winds make banyan leaves rustle. I think about the girls on the court, their callused feet, their smiles when scoring, their tears when losing. Volleyball, to me, has never been just a sport. It is a chronicle of human dedication. In Vietnam, that chronicle still has many blank pages yet to be written. I hope that in the coming pages, we will not stop writing about people who dare to overcome their limits, and about a system that dares to care for them. The match ends, but the stadium still echoes in me like a private space.