Four V-League Sides Fall in the 2026-2027 National Cup Qualifiers: When Home Is No Longer Home

Pleiku's pitch is being dug up to rebuild its drainage system. That is why Hoang Anh Gia Lai hosted Hung Yen at Quy Nhon last weekend, nearly 200 kilometres from home, on grass that does not belong to them, in front of a stand with no familiar faces. The match finished 2-3. By the 77th minute the mountain-city club was 1-3 down. The consolation came from the penalty spot in the 90+4th minute, long after the result had been settled.

At the same time, in Thanh Hoa, the home side lost 0-2 to Becamex TP.HCM, a club just relegated to the First Division and now a candidate to go straight back up. In Hai Phong, the home side lost 0-1 to Thep Can Tho, a team that has just relocated from Quang Ninh to the Mekong Delta and lost its opening First Division fixture of 2026-2027. In Phu Tho, Hong Linh Ha Tinh drew 0-0 over 90 minutes and then lost 3-2 on penalties.

Eight National Cup qualifying matches across two weekend days. Four defeats for clubs currently playing in the V-League against First Division opposition. Three of those defeats came at home. Only Bac Ninh escaped, winning 3-2 away at Long An.

The National Cup sits outside the business plan of most V-League clubs. The deeper you go, the heavier the travel and accommodation costs. The squad gets stretched thinner while the V-League calendar keeps running. For clubs with no title ambitions, a survival place in the V-League is worth far more than a quarter-final in the Cup.

The economics of that decision are simple. A long trip for 25 people, two hotel nights, meals, transport, win bonuses — all exchanged for a match with negligible broadcast revenue. A defeat in the V-League, by contrast, feeds straight into next season's budget, into sponsorship contracts, into the club's very existence.

So V-League sides enter the Cup qualifying round with a rotated eleven, sometimes missing four or five first-choice players. The First Division clubs are the opposite: this is the biggest match of their month. The gap in motivation is wider than the gap in quality, and motivation is the cheapest variable in football for changing a result.

Thanh Hoa: a club that cannot plan three transfer windows cannot plan a pressing structure

The Thanh Hoa club only confirmed it would still exist shortly before the 2026-2027 V-League began. With little money to retain key players or buy new ones, the squad has been eroded season after season. Before facing Becamex TP.HCM, the club met another financial problem: FIFA ordered payment of more than 305,000 USD, roughly 8 billion dong, to Rimario Gordon after the Jamaican striker filed a claim. The document was sent on 16 September. If the matter is not resolved within 45 days, the club will be banned from registering new players for three transfer windows. The tangle is that the case arose under the previous sponsor, while the club has since been transferred to a new one.

A club that does not know who will be in its squad in March cannot design a pressing structure for March. It chooses the cheapest and safest option: a deep defensive block. When that block works, the distance between the back four and the midfield is compressed below 15 metres — enough to seal the central lane, and also enough for every second ball to fall to the opponent if the front line does not compete well.

Becamex TP.HCM were not stronger in terms of personnel; they had just been relegated. But they played with more determination and had an entire season to prove they belong higher up. In the second half, as Thanh Hoa were forced to push their line up searching for a goal, the space behind the midfield opened to more than twenty metres. The second goal came from a transition played straight into that space. The 0-2 scoreline is the arithmetic of a team with no Plan B.

Hoang Anh Gia Lai: the geometry of a home ground that is no longer home

Pleiku has pitch dimensions, altitude and crowd noise that opponents need the first 20 minutes to get used to. Quy Nhon has none of it. Different grass, different touchlines, a different distance from the stands to the sideline. For a team that plays on rhythm and crowd pressure, losing home is not losing a small advantage. It is losing part of the system.

Without the familiar support, HAGL started slower and let Hung Yen control the tempo. By the 77th minute the score was 1-3. The 2-3 reply from the penalty spot in the 90+4th minute only made the result look tighter than it was. In the final 15 minutes, the mountain-city club's defensive line pushed higher than its usual average position — the signature of a team that has run out of options.

This season's HAGL squad is thinner than last year's. Coach Le Quang Trai has fewer choices for rotation, and that showed most clearly in the second half. It was the club's third consecutive defeat across all competitions, following two losses at the start of the 2026-2027 V-League.

Hai Phong: a new striker is a variable with no data

Thep Can Tho had only signed Thaileon a few days before the match. The striker scored the only goal of the game inside the first half. When every defence is prepared with video and average-position data on the opponent, a player with no data is a player with no counter-measure. Hai Phong's defenders did not know where he ran when the ball went to the left flank, whether he dropped to receive or pinned the centre-back.

On top of that, Hai Phong rotated their entire back line. Four defenders who rarely play together will make more errors in holding the line and timing the offside trap. A 0-1 defeat in a match where the home side had more of the ball is the price of experimenting in a department where you are not allowed to experiment.

Hong Linh Ha Tinh: 120 seconds of truth from the penalty spot

In Phu Tho, 90 minutes ended 0-0. The shootout ended 3-2 to the home side. From eleven metres, everything returns to the most basic things: reflexes, the ability to read the opponent's run, and composure. For years, goalkeepers' distribution has been mythologised to the point where clubs will pay a premium for a good foot. But in the decisive moment, what decides is the reflex — a skill that cannot be bought on the transfer market.

One thing worth noting about the Cup qualifying round: there is no VAR at this stage. Matches flow without two-minute stoppages to review an incident at the edge of the box. The rhythm stays intact, and players must accept the referee's decision with their feet. Long VAR reviews shred the rhythm of a game; in Phu Tho, with no VAR present, it was obvious how much that rhythm is worth.

Four First Division clubs, four kinds of motivation

Becamex TP.HCM had just been relegated and needed to prove that relegation was an accident rather than a condition. Hung Yen are a young project building a reputation, and a win over a V-League side is the best advertising they can generate on their own. Thep Can Tho had just changed location, had just lost their opening First Division match, and needed a spark to bind a new team to a new crowd — and Thaileon, signed only days earlier, gave them exactly that spark. Phu Tho played at home, dragged the tie to penalties and won there.

That motivation does not appear from nowhere. It is produced by the competition structure: for a First Division club, the National Cup qualifying round is the only match of the month capable of changing how people see them.

The counter-intuitive angle: four defeats do not prove indifference

The easiest explanation — and the most common — is that V-League clubs do not care about the National Cup. That is partly true, but it is a lazy diagnosis. It turns a problem of resource allocation into a problem of attitude, and attitude cannot be measured with data.

What can be measured is squad depth. Four defeats in two days is a data set on how these clubs operate when four or five key players are missing. A club with a working academy, with young players already given games like these last season, will not collapse structurally when it rotates. A club dependent on eleven names will lose its midfield in the second half.

The second blind spot is in how HAGL's result is read. Many argue that an early Cup exit is a good thing, freeing energy for the V-League survival race. That is true in the short term. But a club that tells itself losing is beneficial will lose more easily, and HAGL have now lost three in a row. The V-League is a long season; no club survives on its first two months, but no club survives by building a habit of losing either.

For Hai Phong and Hong Linh Ha Tinh, the start to the 2026-2027 V-League was not bad: one defeat, one win. Their Cup exit is a rotation choice rather than a tragedy. But one thing is worth weighing: the National Cup is the only competition in the season where a substitute can play a full 90 minutes against an opponent who genuinely wants to win. Drop it, and the club loses its free laboratory as well.

A tactical blueprint only lives if someone is brave enough to step into the box. For V-League clubs in this year's Cup qualifying round, that box was almost always empty.

What to verify in V-League round three

For Thanh Hoa, watch the average position of the midfield after the 70th minute. If the line keeps its distance to the back four under 12 metres, the defensive block is still alive. If the gap stretches beyond 20 metres in two consecutive matches, their problem is no longer personnel but structure. For HAGL, watch how the back four responds when it returns to Pleiku — home may give them back a few metres of pressure and a rhythm. For Hai Phong, watch whether Thaileon starts the next round; if he does, opposing defenders will have to learn him with their own feet.

At Moss Lane in the summer of 2026, I learned that a blueprint saves nobody when the grass swallows your ankles. In Quy Nhon this weekend, the same thing happened in another form: a club lost its home ground to a drainage system, and lost a few metres of its defensive block along with it. When the stadium is empty, I hear football's real voice — and here that voice was the voice of a midfield with nobody covering it.

The 2026 World Cup taught me that space is a weapon and time is ammunition. Four V-League defeats in the National Cup qualifying round do not tell you who is stronger. They tell you who has a Plan B, who has a youth line mature enough to step in, and who is comforting themselves with a rescheduled calendar. The question left for the rest of the season: can a club that cannot afford one extra match afford to stay in the V-League?