V-League On-Pitch Violence and the Silence of the Whistle

I did not note down a single goal in the match between Dong Nai and Cong An Ha Noi (CAHN) on the evening of September 20. Sitting in the technical area, my eyes were fixed on a player lying on the grass: Nguyen Dinh Bac. By that moment the ball had rolled away, and CAHN's striker was clutching his leg, his body curling inward. The stands roared, then fell silent, then roared again. Listen to the rhythm from the observation seat, where tactics begin to lose the beat. Reviewing the footage after the match, I counted two separate acts from the Dong Nai side, both aimed at the same leg of Dinh Bac: an elbow from defender Le Van Son, and two back-to-back kicks from behind by centre-back Huynh Tan Sinh. One match, one target, two crossings of the line. V-League entered its regular season with signals that should have been read early. In round 2, centre-back Doan Van Hau (CAHN) broke the leg of midfielder Doan Ngoc Tan (The Cong Viettel). In the same round, foreign player Ezeqiuel Santos Da Silva (Nam Dinh) stamped on the stomach of Vo Huu Viet Hoang (SHB Da Nang). Two incidents, two victims, two different clubs, one season. By the Dong Nai versus CAHN match on September 20, the list had grown longer. After the string of incidents, representatives of the tournament organisers, the Vietnam Professional Football Joint Stock Company (VPF) and the Vietnam Football Federation (VFF) met directly with the VFF Referees Board. The meeting centred on one demand: referees must apply the laws correctly, uphold the discipline of the competition, and stop violent conduct on the pitch. The phrase "apply the laws correctly" sounds simple. Set against reality, it is a reminder of what was missed: missed fouls, missed cards. And that is precisely what referee Le Vu Linh got wrong in the Dong Nai versus CAHN match. In the situation where Huynh Tan Sinh abandoned the ball to strike Dinh Bac, the main referee used only a yellow card to punish Tan Sinh. He did not use a red card, even though Tan Sinh kicked Dinh Bac off the ball twice. Looking again at those two incidents, the notable thing is the repetition. A player being targeted twice by the same opponent in the same match is usually a sign of a clear instruction rather than a momentary flare of temper. Le Van Son chose an elbow, conduct hard to disguise as a challenge. Huynh Tan Sinh chose kicks from behind, the kind of contact the victim cannot guard against. Both were directed at a target identified in advance. Behind the paperwork is a young player. Dinh Bac is CAHN's spearhead, and being repeatedly targeted goes beyond the scope of a single match. Each time he is kicked off the ball, a striker's confidence erodes a little more. Attacking players learn that, in order to play, they sometimes have to accept living with pain. That is a form of pressure no statistics table records. Speaking after the match, former VFF Vice President for professional affairs and former head of the VFF Referees Board, Duong Vu Lam, put it bluntly: "Referee Le Vu Linh missed a card in this incident. Huynh Tan Sinh's off-the-ball kick was far too blatant, yet he did not receive a red card." He went a step further, raising the question of proportionality: "If they retroactively punish and suspend Tan Sinh for this foul, then referee Le Vu Linh should be suspended from officiating in the same way." Mr Lam also demanded clarity on the responsibility of the VAR team, comprising Mr Vo Hoai Thuong and Mr Nguyen Thanh Son. He analysed two possibilities. If the VAR team advised the main referee but was overruled by him, then the VAR team fulfilled its duty. Conversely, if the VAR team did not advise main referee Le Vu Linh that a red card should be used for the off-the-ball kick mentioned, then the VAR referees must also be dealt with. This is where the story becomes interesting on a technical level. A yellow card in such a situation is both a lenient decision and a shield. Once the referee has dealt with the incident on the pitch, retroactively punishing the player afterwards becomes complicated, because of the principle against punishing the same act twice. In other words, that very yellow card paved the way for Tan Sinh to escape a heavy suspension. Missing a red card here carries weight far beyond an ordinary mistake. It changes the consequence. Usually, the specific disciplinary sanctions for referees are not published widely. Mr Lam revealed how to find out indirectly: "just watch the referee list in the following rounds and you will know whether the referees involved have been suspended from officiating. If they are not assigned in the rounds immediately following the round just played, the likelihood is that they are being disciplined." That mechanism reflects a long-standing operational habit of Vietnamese football. Referee discipline is kept private as an internal matter, while player discipline is published. The result is that the public sees half the picture, and the other half quietly slips by. An empty stadium still carries a beat. An unpublished sanction does not mean it does not exist; it only means the viewer must guess. From a match perspective, targeting a specific player like Dinh Bac is usually a sign of a deliberate plan rather than chance. When opponents identify CAHN's striker as the link that can break their shape, the intensity directed at him increases. Most of that increase stays within the laws. The part that crosses the line, if ignored, will be repeated. Tan Sinh kicked Dinh Bac twice and received only a yellow card. To any defender, that signal is very clear: the price is still cheap. There is a familiar reflex in public opinion: see a bad challenge, immediately demand the referee be suspended from officiating. That reaction is understandable, but it only touches the surface. 127 dissenting voices, one truth: the pitch always answers for itself. The bigger problem lies in the fact that Tan Sinh's off-the-ball kick and Le Van Son's elbow did not appear by chance in a single half. They are the product of an environment in which some teams believe that excessive intensity is still cheaper than the price of allowing opponents to play. In football, abusing trust is also a dirty tactic. Players calculate that a referee will hesitate to produce a red card early in the match, that the VAR team will stay out of ambiguous challenges, that retroactive punishment arrives late and light. When those calculations repeat often enough, they become part of the competitive culture. Referee Le Vu Linh deserves a certain fairness. Producing a red card in a tense match is always a heavy decision, and mistakes are part of the job. But the standard of the competition lies in how that mistake is handled. If it is ignored, the standard automatically drops, and other referees will adjust accordingly. One paradox also needs stating clearly. Suspending a referee from officiating does not automatically make the pitch safer. It only addresses one link. If the structure that encourages physical play does not change, another referee will soon find himself in a similar situation. What needs watching goes beyond who is suspended; it is also whether the standard for red cards is applied consistently from one round to the next. The meeting between VFF, VPF, the tournament organisers and the VFF Referees Board matters because it turns a technical issue into an operational demand. When the organisers speak of discipline, they refer to a chain of reactions: players understanding the laws, referees enforcing them, and the VAR system supporting them properly. One weak link throws the whole chain off beat. What is worth awaiting in the coming rounds is not a widely published list of disciplinary sanctions. The answer will lie in the names that appear or are absent from the referee assignment sheet, in the number of red cards produced inside the first half, and in whether the VAR team dares to intervene in the incidents the main referee prefers not to see. The referee list is the music; the sanctions are merely lyrics that are rarely sung. And if the price of an off-the-ball kick remains cheap, there will always be someone to pay it.