Why PPDA Data Is Telling a Different Story About the 2026 V-League Relegation Battle

In the last three matches, CLB TP.HCM's PPDA dropped from 11.4 to 7.8. That number does not appear on the scoreboard, but it is the clearest signal that this club is transforming in a way few can see from the stands. I stayed behind at Thong Nhat Stadium after the 1-1 draw with Binh Dinh on August 30, 2026, and what lingered was not Van Toan's 89th-minute equalizer, but the pressing rhythm of the midfield in the first 20 minutes of the second half. PPDA, which stands for Passes Per Defensive Action, measures the number of passes the opponent completes before your team makes a defensive action. The lower the number, the higher the pressure. In the 2026 season, TP.HCM finished with an average PPDA of 12.1, among the three lowest-pressing teams in the league. After 8 rounds of the 2026 season, that number is 9.3. In the last three matches, it dropped to 7.8. This is a level of change that, based on my tracking, only Ha Noi FC and The Cong Viettel have managed to sustain across a full season. What is notable is that TP.HCM is not pressing by simply increasing physical intensity. They are pressing by changing their structure. Head coach Nguyen Thanh Cong, who took over in June 2026, shifted the formation from 4-2-3-1 to a 4-4-2 diamond, in which the two central midfielders play offset rather than parallel. When the ball goes to the left wing, the right midfielder tucks inside instead of hugging the touchline, creating a four-man block that squeezes the opponent into a narrow corridor. My tracking data from the last four home matches shows TP.HCM recovering the ball in the opponent's half an average of 6.8 times per match, up from 3.2 times last season. But high pressing does not automatically mean safety. Against Binh Dinh, TP.HCM pressed hard for the first 60 minutes, but from the 61st to the 90th minute, their PPDA spiked to 14.6. The midfield lost its ability to maintain spacing, and Binh Dinh had three clear chances from direct counterattacks. I watched the footage twice and identified the key point: central midfielder Duc Luong, the best player on the pitch with 11 ball recoveries, saw his running distance drop from 10.8 km to 9.1 km in the second half. That decline was not about physical capacity, but about how the team managed its pressing rhythm. When the front line could no longer maintain spacing, the entire block was stretched, and TP.HCM reverted to the team of last season. This is the point that I believe many analyses are overlooking. TP.HCM's story is not the story of a team finding form. It is the story of a team learning to sustain pressure for 90 minutes instead of 60. And in a relegation battle, where the gap between the safe group and the danger zone is only 4 points after 8 rounds, that ability to sustain matters more than any signing. My data from the first 8 rounds of the 2026 season reveals a notable pattern. TP.HCM has earned 11 points from 8 matches, with 9 points coming in the first half and only 2 points in the second half. No team in V-League this season has such a large gap between halves. Ha Noi FC, the league leaders, have earned 14 first-half points and 10 second-half points. The Cong Viettel, third in the table, have earned 10 first-half points and 9 second-half points. TP.HCM's disparity is not unique to them, but it is the most severe among the relegation-threatened group. I spent the last three training sessions observing how TP.HCM's coaching staff addresses this issue. They split the session into two distinct blocks: the first 45 minutes focus on high pressing with live balls, the last 45 minutes focus on low-block defending with dead balls. Head coach Nguyen Thanh Cong told me after the September 4, 2026 session: "We do not try to press for the entire match. We choose the moment. The problem is that the players must recognize that moment without me shouting from the touchline." This is a philosophy of selective pressing, different from the comprehensive gegenpressing that many teams are trying to apply. But there is a paradox I cannot fully explain. While TP.HCM's PPDA has dropped sharply, their goals conceded have not fallen correspondingly. After 8 rounds, they have conceded 12 goals, the second-most in the league. Of those, 7 came in the second half, and 4 came after the 75th minute. This shows that high pressing not only drains physical energy but also creates space behind the midfield line when the block can no longer maintain its spacing. Opponents are learning to wait for TP.HCM to lose rhythm, then launch long balls over the top into exactly that space. I believe this is the tactical blind spot that TP.HCM's coaching staff must address before the mid-season transfer window opens. Signing an additional defensive midfielder with better reading of the game than Duc Luong is a short-term solution. But the long-term solution lies in how the team manages its collective pressing rhythm. A good pressing team is not the one that presses the most, but the one that knows when to press and when to drop back. More broadly, TP.HCM's story reflects a concerning trend in V-League this season. More and more mid-table teams are switching to high pressing as a solution for the relegation battle. But high pressing demands a physical foundation and squad depth that mid-table teams do not have. The result is that they press for 60 minutes, then collapse in the remaining 30. Football becomes a track meet, where the team that runs more in the first half wins, and the team that runs less in the second half loses. This is a direct consequence of gegenpressing being decoded at the tactical level, yet still applied as a physical solution. For TP.HCM, the next internal signal I will be tracking is how they handle the final 30 minutes against Ha Noi FC on September 14, 2026. If their PPDA stays below 10 in the second half, that is a sign that the selective pressing philosophy is on the right track. If PPDA spikes again, the question of squad depth will become more urgent than ever. The stadium has no spectators, but I can still hear the heartbeat of an entire collective. And that heartbeat, in the final 30 minutes, is beating faster than it should. Each season is a piece of music; I am merely the one keeping time for the stories that need to be told. But there are defeats that are not in the score, but in the look in their eyes as they leave the pitch. I write from there.