Two teams, one story in the V-League

In the LPBank V-League 2025/26, two clubs—Nam Dinh and CAHN—competed in regional and continental club tournaments, and the outcomes they achieved were entirely contrasting. CAHN did not get beyond the ASEAN Club Championship group stage and were knocked out prematurely in the AFC Champions League Two Round of 16 for using an invalid player.

Meanwhile, although Nam Dinh had to stop at the AFC Champions League Two group stage, they managed to reach the semifinals of the ASEAN Club Championship before being eliminated by Selangor.

However, their performances in the main domestic league—the V-League—were starkly different, as CAHN raced to the finish line with extremely convincing form, even clinching the title three rounds early, while Nam Dinh struggled in the middle of the table and had no chance of finishing the season among the top three.

If we look at their results in continental and regional competitions, CAHN and Nam Dinh can be considered evenly matched, but their V-League outcomes tell a different story, and it's not hard to pinpoint the reasons for this difference.

During their campaigns in the AFC Champions League Two and the ASEAN Club Championship, Nam Dinh nearly maximized the number of foreign players allowed by the AFC and AFF, and in some matches they fielded only one domestic player in the starting lineup. Nam Dinh also invested heavily in many expensive foreign players for these international tournaments, even including Percy Tau, a star from the South African national team who previously played in the English Premier League.

CAHN, on the other hand, took a different approach: the starting lineup under coach Alexandre Polking always featured more domestic players than foreign ones, and regardless of the competition, local players formed the backbone of the CAHN squad.

Therefore, the cohesion and understanding among CAHN players are indisputable, as they have played together continuously from domestic to international matches. Meanwhile, Nam Dinh even had to carefully consider which foreign players to register for each game, as they had too many imports but limited spots on the field for them.

It must also be said that the quality of domestic players between CAHN and Nam Dinh is vastly different, as most of CAHN's key players are also key figures for the Vietnam national team or the U23 Vietnam team, while Nam Dinh only has a few names in the national team—such as Xuan Son and Van Vi—and none at all in the U23 side.

Therefore, Nam Dinh had no choice but to rely heavily on their foreign contingent. And when their lineup was constantly shuffled between international and domestic competitions, the players could not develop the necessary chemistry, making any idea of a polished and systematic playing style a complete luxury.

Nam Dinh fans were once frustrated watching their beloved team suffer a helpless defeat in the second leg of the ASEAN Club Championship semifinal against Selangor, where Coach Vu Hong Viet's players had almost only one attacking pattern—sending the ball wide and crossing it in—but this monotonous tactic was easily neutralized by Selangor.

When compared to CAHN, the difference is enormous, even in the ASEAN Club Championship, because in the 2024/25 season, CAHN reached the final and nearly beat Buriram United—a team that just won its second consecutive title—on their own turf, if not for excessive stoppage time awarded by the referee. In this regard, Nam Dinh has much to learn from CAHN, the new champion of the LPBank V-League 2025/26.