National Cup 2026-2027: Four V-League Clubs Fall and the Motivation Equation

Minute 38, Lạch Tray Stadium. Thaileon receives the ball at the edge of the box, turns, and shoots. The ball skids low beyond the reach of the Hải Phòng goalkeeper. The stands fall silent for a beat before cheers erupt from the away section. Only a few days earlier, this striker could not yet recall the names of his Thép Cần Thơ teammates. And yet the only goal of the match belonged to him, on the home ground of a V-League side desperate for a morale boost. That was a miniature portrait of the weekend just gone. Eight qualifying matches of the 2026-2027 National Cup were played across two days. The results were not merely scorelines. They were a mirror reflecting the entire hierarchy of motivation in Vietnamese football at this moment. Only one V-League representative advanced cleanly: Bắc Ninh won 3-2 away at first-division Long An. The other four clubs all lost. Three of them fell on their own turf. No familiar home support, no home advantage, and no excuse rooted in external factors. Thanh Hóa lost 0-2 to Becamex TP.HCM. The visitors had just been relegated, are a promotion candidate to bounce back, and showed a squad no weaker than the hosts. They played with more determination, pressed higher, and won with little difficulty. Hoàng Anh Gia Lai lost 2-3 to Hưng Yên at Quy Nhơn, the temporary home of the mountain-city club. Pleiku Stadium is being renovated because its drainage fails under prolonged heavy rain. Without home fans, HAGL trailed 1-3 by the 77th minute before pulling one back from the penalty spot in the 90+4th. Hải Phòng lost 0-1 to Thép Cần Thơ at Lạch Tray. The visitors had just relocated from Quảng Ninh to the Mekong Delta and had lost their opening match of the 2026-2027 first division. Yet they still went home with three points. Hồng Lĩnh Hà Tĩnh drew 0-0 with Phú Thọ after 90 minutes, then lost 2-3 on penalties. Reading these results as a tragedy for Vietnamese football is the wrong approach. The problem is not the level of play. The problem is motivation. For many V-League clubs, especially those without title ambitions, the National Cup is not their main stage. The deeper they go, the higher the travel and accommodation costs. The thinner the squad, the greater the risk of injury and suspension. Meanwhile, a survival spot in the V-League is worth far more than one more round in the National Cup. I have followed many clubs on their long trips. I have seen coaches calculating every flight leg, every meal, every training session. No one wants to trade three survival points in the main league for a cup match that brings no proportional revenue. The beat keeper stands behind the fence, yet the whole formation moves to his rhythm. Here, that rhythm is measured by the budget and the calendar, not by the hunger for a trophy. The first-division clubs are the opposite. They are hungry. They want to prove themselves. They play with the determination of those who have nothing to lose. The perceived gap in quality between the two tiers tends to flatten the moment one side gives everything and the other coasts. The counterintuitive view here is this: losing in the National Cup can actually be good for V-League clubs. Hoàng Anh Gia Lai are facing a difficult season. After two straight defeats to open the 2026-2027 V-League, the mountain-city club is in a relegation fight. This season's squad is weaker than last year's. Against a Hưng Yên full of ambition, coach Lê Quang Trãi's men fell quickly. An early National Cup exit gives them more time to rest, recover, and focus on the arena where they struggle every year. Hải Phòng and Hồng Lĩnh Hà Tĩnh have not had a bad start to the V-League. Hải Phòng has one loss and one win. Hà Tĩnh is the same. Their National Cup defeats were not outside expectations. They are the price paid for saving strength for the survival race. But I do not want to paint too optimistic a picture. Behind those tactical calculations lie deeper problems. Thanh Hóa is the clearest example. The Thanh club only knew it still existed just before the 2026-2027 V-League kicked off. The squad is limited because there is not enough money to keep key players or sign new ones. Before facing Becamex TP.HCM, they also faced a fresh financial worry. FIFA has ordered Thanh Hóa to pay more than 305,000 USD, roughly 8 billion đồng, to Rimario Gordon after the Jamaican striker filed a complaint. If the matter is not resolved within 45 days from receiving the document on September 16, the Thanh club will be banned from registering new players for three transfer windows. The irony: the case stems from the era of the previous sponsor, while the club has already been transferred to a new one. The problem at Thanh Hóa goes beyond tactics. It is a story of survival. An interview is not for asking questions, but for catching the heartbeat of the person across from you. I have sat with quite a few players and coaches during their clubs' difficult spells. What I have learned: when money and the future are uncertain, a cup match becomes a burden rather than an opportunity. The players still take the field, still run, but in their heads is the question of whether this month's wages will be paid on time. Becamex TP.HCM beat Thanh Hóa through preparation. Hưng Yên beat HAGL through hunger. Thép Cần Thơ beat Hải Phòng through a single moment from a new signing. Phú Thọ edged Hồng Lĩnh Hà Tĩnh through nerve in the penalty shootout. No first-division side won on pure luck. They won because their opponents did not treat this match as equal to a V-League fixture. That is why I do not read this as a sign of professional decline. I read it as a sign of imbalance in the competition's structure. A cup is only worth something when people want to win it. To want to win it, the reward must match the price. When prize money does not cover costs, when advancing increases injury risk for a thin squad, then V-League clubs choosing to coast is a rational response, not disrespect. What is worrying is the long-term consequence. If the National Cup keeps being downplayed, its commercial value will keep falling. That loop feeds itself: the less appealing the competition, the less money, the fewer clubs willing to invest, the fewer matches worth watching. Look back at the four defeats once more, but this time from the inside. Thanh Hóa walked into the Becamex match as a club that had just escaped administrative collapse, with personnel and financial issues unresolved. They lost 0-2, and people can talk about weakness. But in truth, what they lacked was not players; it was the stability to focus on playing. Hoàng Anh Gia Lai took the field at Quy Nhơn, not Pleiku. A mountain-city club playing on a temporary ground, against a first-division opponent on the rise. They lost 2-3, and the National Cup slipped from their hands. But the V-League is still there, and that is where this club needs points. Hải Phòng conceded from Thaileon, a player who had joined Thép Cần Thơ only days earlier. The visitors' preparation was better even though their squad was not. Hồng Lĩnh Hà Tĩnh drew 0-0 then fell on penalties, an outcome that can happen to anyone. I remember once sitting in a hotel corridor in the Tô Châu bubble, listening to a foreign player cry from homesickness. That moment taught me that behind every scoreline is a person with their own pressures. Tô Châu quarantined people, but it could not quarantine tears. It is the same here. Those four defeats are not just four lines of results. They are four clubs trying to stay upright under pressures far greater than one cup match. So when someone asks me whether this is an alarm signal for Vietnamese football, I will answer: not exactly. It is a sign that clubs are being forced into hard choices within a system that does not create enough incentive to chase every front. The National Cup still deserves respect. But that respect must be built through structure, through reward, through real benefit for the clubs bold enough to invest. You cannot blame a club fighting for survival for choosing to save energy for the more important match. I am not a fast reporter; I am the one who records the breathing of matches. And the breathing of Vietnamese football right now is beating in one direction: survival first, glory later. For the fans, what they deserve is a cup where wins and losses on the pitch reflect strength and hunger, not calculations outside the touchline. Until that becomes reality, shocks like this weekend will keep recurring. And each time they do, we will ask ourselves the same question: in the end, who is this tournament for?