Money should be well spent

2002 World Cup winner Denilson in his Hải Phòng introduction ceremony in 2009. He played only one game and scored one goal before leaving just two days after his debut. VNA/VNS Photo

Anh Đức

Coach Hoàng Anh Tuấn rocked the V-League last Tuesday for openly declaring his interest in 2018 Ballon d’Or winner Luka Modric, aiming to bring the Croatian superstar to his new team, Becamex Bình Dương.

Two days later, he said that if Modric agrees to join his team, he will also try to ask Lionel Messi.

Though the latter statement was somewhat tongue-in-cheek, Tuấn was serious about the former. And he had every right to make such a flamboyant speech.

In Tuấn’s rationale, recruiting such a star player in Modric will boost the Vietnamese football scene, with fans flocking to stadium to see world-class footballers.

Tuấn mentioned the transfer of 2002 World Cup winner Denilson in 2009 to Hải Phòng FC as an example and that a team with financial backing such as Bình Dương can repeat such instance.

However, it’s noteworthy that although Denilson coming to V-League was a head-turner event, in reality it was a failed transfer.

The Brazilian only played one single game in Hải Phòng, before leaving the V-League citing that he could not fit in Vietnamese football. A rumoured hundred thousands of dollars were paid to facilitate the transfer, but only amounted to one game and one wonder free kick, with the press calling the deal “the fraud of the century”.

Not to mention, Denilson was a somewhat a second-tier star, compared to world-class players such as Modric. The amount of money and salary would be so gigantic that no V-League team could ever afford him and European superstars tend not to take pay cuts to move outside of their continents.

Furthermore, bringing foreign superstars to the V-League is not the best way to use money and develop Vietnamese football, and might do more harm than good. Look no further than China’s Super League, where an influx of footballers in their prime such as Oscar, Marouane Fellaini and Axel Witsel came during the late 2010s. They did get a lot of attention, but eventually led to Chinese footballers being cast aside and led to a decline in the national team’s performance.

Things got worse when the pandemic hit and the ludicrous amount of salary led to teams folding and from the Chinese Super League, with the most notable being Dalian Pro FC, which once boasted Marek Hamsik, Salomon Rondon and was even coached by Rafael Benitez.

Besides, the V-League never needed foreign megastars to attract viewers. During the first heyday of Vietnamese football in 1998 and the renaissance in 2018, it was local stars such as Nguyễn Hồng Sơn, Nguyễn Quang Hải and Nguyễn Công Phượng, who came up the youth ranks and won the heart of Vietnamese football fans. Ticket sales skyrocketed after the Việt Nam under-23s’ miracle in the 2018 AFC U23 Championship and a loyal fanbase for the local players was established.

A good investment is not a short-term one-match one-season deal, but an investment for ten or 20 seasons. If Becamex Bình Dương has a good financial backing and a talented coach in Tuấn, the wiser choice would be developing the next generation of players and not buying dated ones in their 40s. VNS