V-League and the Hot Heads: When Violence Is No Longer an Accident

In the 15th minute, I was sitting in front of a screen in a small apartment in Busan, holding my second notebook — the one I use for situations that never make it into a published piece. Van Son twisted his body, his elbow snapped upward, and Dinh Bac's face tilted away. Referee Le Vu Linh produced a straight red card. The right call. But what made me stop was not that elbow. It was what happened later, in the second half, when the ball was somewhere else and a centre-back with more than a decade of professional football still kept kicking at the legs of a younger player. An empty stadium, but I could still hear the pulse of the match — and on the night of September 20, that pulse was off-beat.

Cong An Ha Noi beat Dong Nai 3-0 in round three of the V-League. A clean scoreline. The scoreboard says it was an ordinary evening, and anyone reading only the result would nod and scroll on. But there are things that never show on a scoreboard, and they decide everything — the way a team learns that rough play draws only a light penalty, the way a referee stands between two currents of pressure, the way fans grow used to arguing about yellow versus red instead of about good football.

I have followed Vietnamese football from South Korea for years, and every new season usually begins with the same question in my head: will this year be different. In round three, the answer is still no.

In the 15th-minute incident, Van Son was sent off outright. Dinh Bac received a yellow card for reacting and provoking his opponent. Two decisions in one phase of play. The telling detail is that the referee did not ignore the moment — he handled both sides. The problem lies elsewhere.

In the second half, Dinh Bac held the ball under pressure from Tan Sinh. The Dong Nai centre-back kept kicking at the opposing player's legs until he went down. The referee gave Tan Sinh a yellow. Across fan forums, the reaction was almost unanimous: too lenient. I read hundreds of comments, and what struck me was not the anger — it was the fatigue. Fans no longer talk about on-pitch violence as an incident. They talk about it as a season.

One comment I copied verbatim into my notebook: a supporter wrote that violence has gone on for many years in the V-League and nobody understands why it cannot be fixed. The writer mentioned Van Hau, who had earlier been suspended for four matches and fined 20 million dong for rough play against Doan Ngoc Tan. A few weeks. Three names. Three degrees of the same story.

This is the part I want to spend the most time on, because it is the hardest. When I worked as a training-ground observer for Busan IPark in K League 2, I learned something from coach Kim Do-hoon: intensity and violence are not the same thing. A hard, well-timed challenge is technique. A challenge after the ball has gone is a choice. And choices can be corrected — through coaching, through sanctions, through plain talk in the dressing room.

What the V-League lacks, as I see it, is not heavier punishment. Punishment exists. Van Hau was banned for four matches. That is not small. What is missing is consistency. A disciplinary system only has power when it is predictable — when players know the same act brings the same sanction, regardless of name, regardless of club, regardless of the minute. When the standard shifts between matches, players learn nothing except how to bargain with luck.

I once thought VAR would solve part of this. I was wrong, or at least I thought too simply. VAR does not make controversy disappear; it moves controversy from the pitch into the review room, where the grey areas of the law are dissected more slowly but not more clearly. Fans still have to ask the same question: what is enough for a red card. If that question has no unified answer before a season starts, every round becomes a fresh argument.

Here I have to be honest about something that made me hesitate while writing. On the forums, some argued that Dinh Bac should look at himself — that his showy style, his needling of opponents, turned him into a target. I understand the logic. But I cannot follow it. A player has the right to play his own way, as long as it stays inside the laws. If a celebration or a piece of ball control is treated as an excuse to kick someone's legs, then the problem is not the person who got kicked. I do not want that line to blur, even knowing that saying so invites charges of one-sidedness.

Every player has his own rhythm. I only look for where it begins. For Tan Sinh, that rhythm began long ago — a former U20 international who played at a World Cup, an SEA Games champion with Vietnam's U23, more than ten years as a professional. Nobody plays for over a decade without knowing what he is doing. That is why I do not believe this was an accident. A young player losing his temper is understandable. A veteran repeating a kick at an opponent's legs after the ball has gone — that is a decision, taken in a fraction of a second, but a decision nonetheless.

This is where I want to say what many inside the game probably know but few say aloud. Violence on the pitch reaches beyond the players. It is the product of an environment. When a referee is placed between controlling the match and protecting the players, he usually chooses control — because that is what he is judged on. A yellow card for a tackle from behind is a way of keeping the match from breaking apart. But it also teaches both teams that the limit has just been pushed a little further away.

The 2026 season taught me that silence can also be a form of support. Now I think slightly differently. Silence can be support, but it can also be tolerance. The organisers stay silent, the clubs stay silent, and a few weeks later there is another incident to argue about.

Fans worry about the players ahead of the FIFA ASEAN Cup. I understand that worry, but it should not be the main reason to change. If we only fix things because we fear losing players before a tournament, then after the tournament we will return to how we were. What needs fixing is the standard, not the consequence. From Busan to the World Cup, I learned that football does not lie — it simply reflects exactly what people accept. On the night of September 20, we accepted that a kick from behind deserved only a yellow card. The next round will show us what we accept next.