Four V-League Clubs Fall in the 2026-2027 National Cup Qualifiers: When Home Turf Stops Protecting

In the 90+4th minute at Quy Nhon stadium, the referee pointed to the penalty spot. There was no drumbeat, no familiar wave rolling through the stands of the highland town. Only the sound of boots scraping grass and a hoarse voice shouting from the technical area. The penalty went in, the score closed at 2-3, and Hoang Anh Gia Lai left the National Cup at the qualifying stage. A few hundred kilometres away, in Pleiku, the pitch is being dug up to rebuild a drainage system after repeated heavy rain. The highland club had to borrow Quy Nhon as its home, and that temporary home saved no one. I re-watched the footage of all eight matches played across the two weekend days. What stayed with me was not the goals. What stayed with me was how the teams walked into these games, or rather, how they never truly walked in at all. The 2026-2027 National Cup qualifying round had eight fixtures. Four V-League representatives lost to First Division sides. Three of those defeats came at home. Only Bac Ninh escaped, winning 3-2 away at Long An. Reading that list aloud sounds like an inventory. Thanh Hoa lost 0-2 at home to Becamex TP.HCM, a club just relegated and now a promotion candidate. Hoang Anh Gia Lai lost 2-3 to Hung Yen after trailing 1-3 from the 77th minute. Hai Phong lost 0-1 at home to Thep Can Tho, the only goal scored by Thaileon just days after he joined the club that has just relocated from Quang Ninh to Can Tho. Hong Linh Ha Tinh drew 0-0 with Phu Tho over 90 minutes and then collapsed 2-3 in the penalty shootout. One thing needs to be said plainly. For most V-League clubs, the National Cup is not a primary competition. The deeper you go, the more you spend on travel and accommodation, the more you have to rotate your squad, while surviving in the V-League is the life-or-death order. That lukewarm approach opens the door for First Division teams, who walk in with far greater determination. But stopping at "V-League clubs do not care" means missing the most interesting part of the story. The National Cup qualifiers are held in late September, when the season has barely started, and they turn out to be the earliest X-ray of the entire campaign. They expose three things the league table has not yet exposed: squad depth, cash flow, and the true priority order of each club. Thanh Hoa is the clearest case. The club from Thanh Hoa province only learned it still existed just before the 2026-2027 V-League kicked off. Its squad is thin because there was not enough money to keep key players, nor enough to buy new ones. Then, right before the Becamex TP.HCM match, a document arrived from FIFA: the club must pay more than USD 305,000, roughly VND 8 billion, to Rimario Gordon after the Jamaican striker filed a claim. The document was dated 16 September. If the matter is not resolved within 45 days, Thanh Hoa will be banned from registering new players for three transfer windows. The sticking point is that this debt arose during the previous sponsor's tenure, while the club has since been handed over to a new sponsor. Whoever arrives later inherits the debt of whoever left earlier. The transfer market is a false winter, where hope is freeze-dried between numbers. And in Thanh Hoa, that winter arrived earlier than forecast. I have followed many National Cup seasons and noticed a pattern few are willing to name. The gap between the bottom of the V-League and the top of the First Division has narrowed considerably in squad quality, but the fixed-cost gap has not narrowed at all. A V-League club must pay wages at V-League levels, rent a stadium to V-League standards, and travel on a V-League schedule. A First Division team spending the same amount on a single cup tie can buy more in human terms. That is why Becamex TP.HCM walked into Thanh Hoa's stadium with a squad no weaker than the hosts, and played with more conviction. Hoang Anh Gia Lai took a different road but reached the same destination. Two straight defeats at the start of the 2026-2027 V-League pushed the highland club into the relegation race from the very first matchday. This season's squad is thinner than last season's. Against a Hung Yen side full of ambition, the team under coach Le Quang Trai broke apart faster than the most pessimistic forecast. Football lives in the silence between two bounces of the ball, where the viewer's heart scores on its own. But the silence at Quy Nhon that night held only quiet. Hai Phong and Hong Linh Ha Tinh are the two names that caught my attention most, because both began the 2026-2027 V-League reasonably well, each with one defeat and one win. Yet both stopped here. For Hai Phong, the 0-1 loss to Thep Can Tho was not so much a shock as a calculation. The port city club understood that a midweek cup tie could take away their legs in the weekend league match. For Hong Linh Ha Tinh, holding Phu Tho to 0-0 and then winning on penalties revealed a line-up set up to advance on minimum effort, and it was not enough. Here I want to go against the usual reflex of the commentating trade. That reflex says this is a shock, that Vietnamese football is witnessing the rise of the First Division. I do not believe that reading. Four defeats in one qualifying round are not a revolution in the hierarchy, but the inevitable result of a competition system in which the National Cup is treated as a cost rather than an asset. When you design a tournament in which the reward for going deep does not compensate for the risk of going deep, you get exactly what you designed. That leads to a conclusion harder to hear for the First Division sides. The wins by Becamex TP.HCM, Hung Yen, Thep Can Tho and Phu Tho carry enormous emotional value, but they do not prove those clubs are ready for the V-League. They prove they were ready for a match in which the opponent had placed its priorities elsewhere. Those are two very different things. For Hoang Anh Gia Lai, an early cup exit may actually be beneficial. The highland club needs to pour all its resources into the relegation fight it faces every season. Two fewer cup matches mean two fewer trips, two fewer injury risks, two weeks of undivided focus. For Hai Phong and Hong Linh Ha Tinh, the logic is similar. But for Thanh Hoa, the 0-2 home defeat is neither good nor the most important thing about their week. The most important thing is the document of 16 September and the 45-day clock that is running. A transfer ban spanning three windows, for a club that already cannot afford to keep its key players, is a far heavier punishment than elimination from the National Cup. The loss to Becamex TP.HCM will be forgotten within two matchdays. The transfer ruling will not. And this is the part I consider most important, the part no scoreline records. A club banned from registering players for three transfer windows will not collapse immediately. It will bleed quietly. This season it lacks a centre-back. Next season it lacks a midfielder. By the time anyone notices, the club is at the bottom of the table with no way to buy its way back. Cases like Rimario Gordon's do not kill a club overnight. They kill with compound interest. I am too old to chase the ball, but still young enough to chase a piece of skill on a screen. At this age, I have learned that what happens in the National Cup qualifiers in late September is usually a draft of what will happen in May. Those four defeats are faint handwriting, but legible. They speak of squad depth, of cash flow, of priorities that coaching staffs never announce to the press. One more thing deserves mention, however uncomfortable it is for the National Cup. The current format forces V-League clubs to play a qualifying tie at a time when their squads are still being assembled. Thaileon scored for Thep Can Tho just days after joining the club. That is a fine image for the contract, but it is also a reminder that his opponents were not prepared to deal with a player whose footage they had no time to study. The National Cup rewards surprise and punishes a lack of preparation. In September, almost every V-League club is underprepared. If the organisers want the National Cup taken seriously, the answer does not lie in appeals to spirit. It lies in mechanism: prize money per round large enough to cover costs, a schedule that does not force V-League clubs to choose between cup and league, and a genuine incentive for the champion. Without those things, every September we will sit and count how many V-League clubs fall to First Division sides, and call it a surprise again. Night falls on an unlit pitch, and I listen to the ball roll and call it a poem. But the poem of the 2026-2027 National Cup qualifiers is not written about goals. It is written about what a club chooses not to do. And the question I leave for myself, and for those running V-League clubs: if a September cup tie can foreshadow the following May, is anyone actually listening?