Four V-League Defeats in the 2026-2027 National Cup: When Home Becomes a Burden

In Quy Nhon, the shout of a man behind the goal was loud enough that people on the far stand could hear the player's name. Hoang Anh Gia Lai had borrowed this ground as home, because Pleiku's pitch was being rebuilt and its drainage had surrendered to a long stretch of rain. No gongs, no twenty thousand mountain-city fans. Only an empty afternoon and a hungrier Hung Yen side. Over those two weekend days, eight qualifying ties of the 2026-2027 National Cup ended with four defeats for clubs currently playing in the V-League, inflicted by first-division opponents. Three of the four happened at home. The only V-League representative to beat a first-division side was Bac Ninh, and even they needed a hard-fought 3-2 away at Long An. An empty stadium does not make a match lighter; it makes every breath heavier. The fuller picture is broader still. Thanh Hoa lost 0-2 at home to Becamex Ho Chi Minh City, a club just relegated and now a promotion candidate. The two squads were not far apart in quality, but the visitors wanted it more and won without much difficulty. Hoang Anh Gia Lai lost 2-3 to Hung Yen in Quy Nhon. The mountain-city club fell 1-3 from the 77th minute and only pulled one back from the penalty spot in the fourth minute of stoppage time. Hai Phong lost 0-1 at home to Thep Can Tho, a side that had just relocated from Quang Ninh to the Mekong Delta, had just lost its first-division opener, and yet saw striker Thaileon, signed only days earlier, score the only goal of the game in the first half. Hong Linh Ha Tinh drew 0-0 with Phu Tho after 90 minutes and then lost 2-3 on penalties away from home. The bowed heads after that shootout reminded me of another bowed head, on a World Cup night long ago. I found my own shame in Azmoun's bowed head. For many V-League clubs, especially those without grand ambition, the National Cup has never been the main stage. The deeper you go, the more you spend on travel and lodging, and the more you must rotate your squad through a congested calendar, while avoiding relegation in the V-League matters far more. That indifference is a calculation, and every calculation has a price: first-division sides walk onto the pitch with greater resolve, and resolve is not something a wage bill can buy. Thanh Hoa embodies that logic most clearly. The club from Thanh land only learned it still existed just before the 2026-2027 V-League kicked off, with a thin squad because there was not enough money to keep key players or sign new ones. Before facing Becamex Ho Chi Minh City, they also faced a fresh financial worry about keeping the club alive. FIFA has ordered the club to pay more than 305,000 USD, roughly 8 billion dong, to Rimario Gordon after the Jamaican striker filed a claim. The document was sent on 16 September, with a condition attached: if the matter is not resolved within 45 days, the club will be barred from registering new players for three transfer windows. The complication is that the case arose under the previous sponsor's tenure, while Thanh Hoa has since been handed over to a new sponsor. A debt stays behind the people, and it does not care who is signing contracts now. A transfer does not end at the contract; it begins in longing. Hoang Anh Gia Lai, meanwhile, enters the season with a familiar worry. The club lost its first two V-League matches of 2026-2027, its squad is thinner than last season, and against a more ambitious Hung Yen, the team under coach Le Quang Trai collapsed about as quickly as one might expect. No Pleiku, no gongs. In the summer of 2026, Liverpool won the title in silence, and I understood that glory also needs spectators. In Quy Nhon that afternoon, I understood something else: so does defeat. Based on my experience following matches across many competitions, the gap between mid-table V-League sides and the top of the first division is usually narrower than the badge on the shirt suggests. Thaileon needed only a few days to score the decisive goal for Thep Can Tho. That shows individual quality in the first division is not low at all; what is missing is system, fixture support, money and attention. Bac Ninh won 3-2 at Long An, and the price of that win was a match in which both teams had to empty themselves as if there were no tomorrow. The blind spot is that we call these results surprises. They recur every season, regularly enough to be a rule rather than an accident. What is genuinely surprising is that collective memory still flinches as if for the first time. We remember the cup as a symbol of glory, and forget that for a club trembling near the relegation zone, that cup is an invoice. So a National Cup exit, seen from another angle, can be a release. Hoang Anh Gia Lai leaving early means extra weeks without travel, without midweek fixtures, without gambling on the fragile legs of a short squad. For a club that must fight relegation almost every season, every match removed is a saving, even when it is called a defeat. The same applies to Hai Phong and Hong Linh Ha Tinh, whose V-League starts have not been bad at all with one loss and one win, and whose cup exits were hardly a shock. But there is another layer that should not be swallowed for comfort. When a club chooses to play in a way that minimises the cost of progressing, the final price is paid by the fans who stay in the stands. In Thanh Hoa, in Hai Phong, at grounds where people still buy tickets for a match the home side treats as a formality, what is lost is not three points but a reason to believe this game matters. A cup competition survives only on the seriousness of those who enter it; when seriousness is weighed against bus fares and hotel bills, the cup loses before the ball rolls. One more thing should be said plainly: indifference is not the morality of a poor club. It is the outcome of an incentive system placed in the wrong spot. When National Cup prize money does not cover travel costs, while a V-League survival place decides the fate of an entire organisation, choosing the league is the rational behaviour of an institution trying to exist. To change behaviour, you change the structure of incentives, not the tone of the post-match commentary. Every match is an unfinished poem, and I am its slowest reader. So the question left after this weekend is not which team lost, but what happens to a cup competition when the participants themselves learn that losing early is a rational choice.