VietNamNet Bridge – The General Department of Sports and Physical Training has not allowed football teams to use overseas Vietnamese players.
The department and the Vietnam Football Federation (VFF) yesterday, March 6, considered the draft regulations on professional football. They discussed issues related to overseas Vietnamese players.

The VFF suggested that each football club (FC) is permitted to use one Vietnamese-origin player, who is considered as a local player, in a match. However, overseas Vietnamese players must satisfy the following condition: coming from a second-grade FC at least.

The suggestion was actually put forward by the Vietnam Professional Football (VPF) Company, which is running Vietnam’s professional football tournaments. VFF agreed with the proposal and the federation submitted it to the General Department of Sports and Physical Training and the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism for approval.

According to the VPF, the proposal was to respond to the State’s policy on calling overseas Vietnamese for returning home to contribute to the country’s development. It said that most overseas Vietnamese are methodologically trained in developed countries.

However, the General Department of Sports and Physical Training did not agree with the VFF and VPF’s suggestion because it worried that overseas Vietnamese players would take away the opportunity of local players.

Vietnam did not perform well at recent international football tournaments. According to experts, one of the reasons for the failure was that local players did not have chance to practice at the V-League, because of the presence of foreign and naturalized players.

According to the current regulations, each FC is allowed to use three foreign players in a match. In addition, FCs have one naturalized player on average so only seven domestic players are used in each game. If one overseas Vietnamese player is admitted, only six local players will have opportunity to play in a match.

At the meeting, some officials proposed to reduce the number of foreign players in each game to give the chance to overseas Vietnamese players. However, the VFF did not agree because it was afraid of the decrease of quality of football tournaments.

At present, there is only one overseas Vietnamese player who satisfies the VFF’s conditions - Johnny Nguyen of the Hanoi FC.

The name of the national football championship was also a topic at the yesterday meeting.

Previously, at a meeting on February 21 of the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, the General Department of Sports and Physical Training, the VFF and the VPF, the English name of the national football championship was agreed to be the “V-League”. However, the VFF once again suggested the name “V-Super League”.

The General Department of Sports and Physical Training will consider and make final decision on this issue. However, it is highly possible that the previous name “V-League” will be used.

S. Tung