OPINION: Why ‘NQH’ must leave Vietnam

Phones, shoes, motorbikes and much more besides: if there’s a product to be advertised in Vietnam there’s a good chance that Nguyen Quang Hai is the face attached to it.

Not just one of the more marketable footballers in the country, the 22-year-old is one of the most famous people, full stop, in this nation of 96 million where the national sport and celebrity mix like few others.

There’s an insatiable demand for news about the national team stars, tickets to major matches often go for 50-100 times their face value on the black market and the atmosphere around the home stadium in My Dinh is something between a rock concert, a fireworks festival and an illegal dance party.

The one player at the centre of all this attention is the exceptionally gifted Nguyen Quang Hai – long a personal favourite of mine and now one of the biggest football stars not just in Southeast Asia but across the continent more broadly.

Why then is he still playing his club football in a rather modest venue in the middle of the chaos of downtown Hanoi, prancing about in front of a huge portrait of Ho Chi Minh in front of crowds of a couple of thousand?

The pint-sized playmaker should be by now at one of the top clubs in Asia or at a much higher level in Europe – as his teammates Nguyen Cong Phuong, Doan Van Hau and Dang Van Lam are.

The answer is neither straightforward nor easy to understand but much centres on the reluctance of his club, Hanoi FC, to allow Quang Hai and others to move.

True, they did permit Van Hau to undertake a one-year loan at Heerenveen in the Dutch top flight but as with many others in Vietnam from different clubs, loan deals tend to be the extent of the permissions allowed for players to move abroad.

There’s much speculation about the nature of the contracts signed by many Vietnamese players, with huge numbers understood to be subjected to terms far in excess of the maximum number of years permitted by FIFA – a shackle that effectively keeps them tied to the clubs that have been responsible for their development.

Moreover there’s a belief at many clubs that the players themselves are best served remaining in the country and continuing their development until their mid-20s by which time they’ll be ‘ready’ to go to Europe.

Not only is that – in the case of the leading stars such as Quang Hai – patently ridiculous it’s also bordering on being a restriction of trade.

That’s just the local angle.

The second part of the problem is a lack of proper scouting by many European clubs who simply look at players from Vietnam and elsewhere in Southeast Asia and scoff.

We were told that this would all change after the recent exploits of the Vietnamese youth teams at the U20 World Cup and the AFC U22 tournament – that soon hoards of players would be moving abroad.

Well, what happened?

Almost nothing is what happened and that’s an outrage.

Not only Quang Hai but at least half a dozen of those youth team stars (now maintstays of the senior side) should be plying their trade at a top level in Asia or in Europe yet many are being forced to remain at their club sides in Vietnam, where there is interest in their signatures, or shamefully not being courted by clubs due to a lack of accurate and informed scouting or agent networks.

As those close to the deal to take Van Hau to Europe found out there’s a perception that in their early 20s these Vietnamese players are already ‘too old’ or that simply players are being signed to try and forge business ties with the world’s 15th largest nation and a rapidly growing economic power.

The same kind of arguments then that we heard about players from Japan and Korea a decade or more prior.

Surely, as those players started to move and impress, so we will see others from Vietnam and Southeast Asia follow.

What can’t afford to happen is that this brilliant generation of Golden Stars be forced to waste their talents playing in Hanoi, Hai Phong, Thanh Hoa or Binh Duong.

As I’ve written about on numerous occasions the VFF and the national team coaching staff must take active roles in working with the clubs to allow these players to move abroad.

I know personally that almost every one of the current team has the desire to do so, yet here we sit with only three of the current crop able to do so – two of them likely to be back home after their loans expire next year.

This team has the raw quality to reach the World Cup yet with their leading players not being permitted to move abroad there’s a ceiling that Vietnamese football is already brushing.

The crown of that crop is Quang Hai and for the pint-sized, left-footed, magician there’s actually been quite a few suitors – from other leagues in Southeast Asia, from Korea and Japan, Croatia and elsewhere in Europe yet still nothing has materialized.

In this case it’s a credit in some ways to those close to the player in trying to find the right move but also a recognition of the significant roadblocks that Hanoi FC are placing in allowing the player to move only on their terms.

I’ve heard stories from clubs in Asia that feel the loan fee being asked for by Hanoi is ‘exorbitant’ and that’s what’s prevented a deal from happening so far, and if true that’s a real shame.

What I would love to happen is for the attacking star to find his way next year to Japan and I know for a fact that there are a host of clubs interested in the player but the key, as others from Southeast Asia have found, is to go to a club where they are firmly in the coach’s plan and not merely to enhance the links between the J.League and the region.

Look at how well this has worked out for Chanathip Songkrasin who has become one of the best creative players in the league after his move to Sapporo.

There are four or five very good coaches in Japan where Quang Hai would be allowed to feature and flourish and that would do wonders for his development at such a crucial point in his career.

At the wrong club or league – and I count anywhere else in Southeast Asia in that equation – his career could be killed, so this move is a vitally important one.

There’s no question that Quang Hai must move and must do so during this current off-season in Vietnam but equally as importantly he mustn’t be viewed as a ‘commodity’ but rather for what he clearly is – and that’s as the jewel of Vietnamese and Southeast Asian football.

A generational player, a fine individual and representative of Vietnamese football who has the chance to put his nation on the global map with a wand of a left foot, exceptional vision and the creative talents to tear any match open.

Photo: Hanoi FC Facebook