Violence Returns to V-League 2026: Why VAR Still Isn't Enough to Stop Off-Ball Kicks?

Round 3 of V-League 2026, Hang Day Stadium, the afternoon of September 20. Dong Nai were losing 0-3 to Hanoi Police FC, a man down after an earlier red card, and the match was effectively over. The ball was passed back to their own half, all eyes fixed on the left wing where Dinh Bac was controlling play. Then what I had been waiting for throughout my years in this profession happened: a Dong Nai defender, left behind, raised his leg and kicked directly into Dinh Bac's heel as the ball had already rolled elsewhere. Referee Le Vu Linh stood less than ten meters away with an unobstructed view, but no whistle came. Only when Dinh Bac collapsed holding his leg did the referee turn around. The offender, Huynh Tan Sinh, spread his arms with a look of surprise, as if he were the one fouled. VAR checked. The stadium screen displayed the familiar message. Three minutes later, Le Vu Linh ran over and produced a yellow card. Not a red. For a blatant off-ball kick, delivered behind the referee's back, against a player without the ball, in an era when VAR has been active in the league for three seasons. I learned more in the corridors of Luzhniki than in press conferences. In Russia in 2026, I saw a nearly identical case: a player was shown a yellow for an off-ball kick, and the matter later escalated into a three-match ban once footage was submitted to the disciplinary committee. My lesson from those corridors is simple: when an off-ball foul is punished with just a yellow, the problem is never about one referee alone. It is about an entire refereeing culture, a disciplinary culture, and the consistency of the sanction system. The story of V-League 2026 does not start with Huynh Tan Sinh. It starts earlier, more violently, and far more alarmingly. V-League 2026 has only played three rounds, but the phrase "violence returns" has dominated Vietnamese sports pages. Not without reason. In Round 2, the match between The Cong Viettel and CAHN on September 14, Doan Van Hau — a national team star, the pride of Vietnamese football — produced a tackle without controlling his leg, breaking midfielder Doan Ngoc Tan's leg. This was no ordinary sliding tackle. The CAHN defender came from behind, his leg raised to shin height, with zero chance of reaching the ball because the ball had already been pushed away by Doan Ngoc Tan. Professionals call it a leg-breaking tackle. Fans call it exactly what it is. Doan Ngoc Tan left the field on a stretcher — the most serious injury since the start of the season — and according to what I heard from the corridors of sports hospitals, the Viettel midfielder will be sidelined for six to nine months. A whole season, perhaps an entire year of his career, erased in a single second-long challenge. Three days later, in Nam Dinh's Round 3 match, Brazilian foreign player Ezequiel Santos Da Silva — making his V-League debut — stamped on an opponent's stomach when the ball was long gone. It was a deliberate, high stamp, with no element of accident. When I reviewed the footage, the first thing I noticed was not Ezequiel's action but his eyes before the stamp. They were the eyes of a frustrated player seeking to vent on an opponent in a way he thought would be hard to detect. Ezequiel was wrong. VAR catches everything. But the question that followed was not only why he did it, but why a player new to the V-League thought he could get away with it. The answer is not difficult, but it is uncomfortable: Ezequiel had learned somewhere — perhaps from the very matches of this league, perhaps from his previous clubs — that violence has its price, and VAR does not always arrive in time. Then came the CAHN-Dong Nai match on September 20, the situation I described at the beginning. What many news reports missed is that Dinh Bac was not fouled off the ball once. He was fouled twice, by two different Dong Nai players, in the same match. The first was an elbow thrust into his ribs while Dinh Bac was making an off-ball run. The second was Huynh Tan Sinh's cold kick. Two Dong Nai players, two off-ball incidents, two styles of violence, all aimed at one target: Dinh Bac, CAHN's most important young attacker. This is no longer coincidence. In top-level football, when a talented young forward is targeted twice in one match, that is tactics. Dirty tactics, absent from any coaching manual, but present in every league in the world — from the Brazilian third division to the Champions League. This tactic operates on a twisted logic: if you cannot stop a player from playing football, make him afraid to play it. But V-League 2026 is not a playground for fools. To understand why these acts of violence erupted early in the season, one must understand the wider context. Since VAR was officially introduced into Vietnam's top flight three seasons ago, a clear positive trend was noted. Deliberate fouls declined, players competed more carefully and cleverly to avoid being caught by VAR. Veterans I spoke with in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City all acknowledged: the VAR era changed the behavior of Vietnamese players toward greater discipline. The national team, built around players accustomed to playing under VAR's scrutiny, performed admirably at the 2026 ASEAN Cup, where Vietnam advanced deep into the tournament thanks to controlled football and impressive tactical discipline. The image of the Vietnamese national team in the eyes of Southeast Asian fans is a smart, disciplined side that avoids unnecessary collisions and forces opponents into yellow cards. Then, in just seven days of September 2026, three serious violent incidents reversed that entire positive narrative. A leg-breaking tackle, a stamp on the stomach, a cold kick, and an elbow. These images were replayed by the media, slowed down, analyzed frame by frame, and fans began asking: what good is VAR if violence persists? I want to say something many people do not want to hear: VAR cannot stop violence. It only detects it. And if violence continues, is detected, but the disciplinary consequences are not severe enough, VAR inadvertently becomes proof of the system's impotence. Look at how the VFF Disciplinary Committee responded once pressure mounted. On September 21 — just one day after the CAHN-Dong Nai match — VFF announced an emergency disciplinary meeting to review violent incidents from Rounds 2 and 3. One day. Just one day for an emergency disciplinary meeting. In the history of world football, a national federation convening an emergency meeting within 24 hours of a match usually means things have gone too far. But the urgency of the meeting matters less than what will be decided in it. And here, I want to emphasize: it is precisely the lack of consistency in past disciplinary decisions that has created fertile ground for violence. The year 2026 is a painful milestone that I cannot fail to mention. That year, Tran Anh Khoa of SHB Da Nang — a promising 23-year-old midfielder — suffered a broken leg in a horrific tackle. His career never truly recovered. He lingered on the fringes for a few more seasons, then retired quietly, his name largely forgotten. Earlier, in 2026, An Giang's Anh Hung also broke his leg in a similar situation. And in another famous case, foreign striker Hoang Vu Samson was the victim of a heel stamp — the infamous "spike stamp" — in the V-League. These victims share one thing: they came from clubs that are not the most powerful in the league. They did not have enough voice to push their cases to the end. People in football often joke that in the second division, the prettiest statistics are the ones most carefully polished. This applies equally to the disciplinary reality of newly promoted clubs in the V-League. Dong Nai, as far as I know, have just returned to the top flight from the First Division. Most of their players have never played in the V-League, have never been used to VAR watching from every angle. They are used to the First Division environment, where VAR is less active, where referees may overlook dirty play, and where mastering the unwritten rules of a physical battle for the ball is a survival skill. When players used to that style of football step up to a harsher environment — where they face technically superior players like Dinh Bac — they react on old instincts. The instinct learned in the First Division: stop the opponent at all costs, even with off-ball fouls. What is notable is that the CAHN defense and other strong teams are not wholly innocent either. Doan Van Hau, the man who broke Doan Ngoc Tan's leg, is no novice. He is a pillar of the national team, has played in major tournaments, and received professional training in Europe. If a player of Doan Van Hau's caliber still makes leg-breaking tackles, we cannot blame it on lower-league instinct or inexperience with VAR. Dr. Doan Minh Xuong, an experienced analyst of Vietnamese football, told the press after the incident: this is not a moment of impulse or loss of control, it is a habit. A habit long embedded in his style of play, a habit formed over many years of playing the "tough guy" role, of intimidating opponents. VAR cannot erase a habit simply by replaying the match. Let me pause here to say something that may upset more people than the Van Hau case itself. While Doan Van Hau has faced fierce condemnation from pundits and fans, with many demanding long bans, Huynh Tan Sinh and Dong Nai's players have been treated differently: their actions are excused as naivety, as unfamiliarity with VAR, as the struggle of a newly promoted team. There is a double standard in public reception: the national team star is scrutinized under a magnifying glass, while the promoted-club player is granted leniency. Do not misunderstand me. I am not defending Doan Van Hau. A leg-breaking tackle is a leg-breaking tackle, whether committed by a star or an unknown. But if our disciplinary system is strong only against the famous and lax against the unknown, we send a dangerous message: go on, be violent, as long as you are nobody. Referee Le Vu Linh's decision to show only a yellow card to Huynh Tan Sinh has greater consequences than the cold kick itself. Because it sends a message to every player watching on television: even when VAR is watching, even when millions see your off-ball kick, you can still get only a yellow if the on-field referee is weak. The VAR officials for that match, Vo Hoai Thuong and Nguyen Thanh Son, certainly had to explain themselves at the emergency meeting on September 21. Why was such an obvious off-ball kick not recommended for review? Why did the referee, after being invited to check VAR, maintain his yellow card? These questions are not only in the meeting minutes. They are in the minds of hundreds of referees nationwide, who are trying to determine how strict they are permitted to be. Referee Le Vu Linh and his VAR assistants should have been the guardians of V-League discipline. Instead, they became part of the problem. When cross-referenced with match footage, some situations in the Round 3 match suggest the referee tended to go easy on a side that was losing heavily and playing a man down. Dong Nai had already received a red card, were three goals behind, the match effectively over. Could the referee have subconsciously thought that punishing a struggling team harshly would look excessive? I have seen this mentality in many leagues — from the Bundesliga to the Thai second division. Referees tend to avoid heavy sanctions when the offending team is already at a disadvantage. But that is a tactical error of officiating. Because when a team is losing heavily and down to ten men, that is exactly the moment they are most likely to lose control. That is the moment they are most likely to retaliate. And that is the moment the referee must be strictest to prevent something worse. Dong Nai's players, including Huynh Tan Sinh, may not fully understand VAR. But they understand one thing very clearly: if the referee does not punish, then no one will. And they know the match result is already settled. A player who has lost his logic, as expert Doan Minh Xuong put it, grows more dangerous the longer he remains on the pitch. When a player can no longer keep calm, he is capable of things far worse than a cold kick. A leg-breaking tackle. A stamp on the face. Anything is possible. So where does the answer lie? It lies in the principle of deterrence. It is the principle I have seen work effectively in European leagues, where VAR is viewed not merely as a detection tool but as a teaching tool. In those leagues, players know that an off-ball foul in front of VAR almost certainly means a red card, almost certainly an additional suspension, and almost certainly relentless media scrutiny. The cost of violence must outweigh its benefits. When the cost is not high enough, violence comes back. Many people ask me why the V-League, which already has VAR and has made headline-grabbing disciplinary rulings, still faces this reality. Based on my years of watching matches, I would answer: the problem is not whether VAR is good enough; it is whether the disciplinary consequences are strong enough. In recent seasons, some players have been suspended for three or four matches merely for verbally abusing referees, while challenges that could end another player's career were punished lightly. This imbalance has eroded players' trust in the system's fairness. On September 21, the VFF Disciplinary Committee met in emergency session. It is likely they will hand down lengthy suspensions for the players involved. But holding an emergency meeting and issuing rulings is their business. The bigger question, the one I want to raise in this article, is whether those rulings will be applied consistently throughout the season. Will an unknown Dong Nai player be punished as heavily as a national team star? Will the referee and VAR assistants who made mistakes be dealt with publicly, or merely quietly reprimanded before returning to officiating? I do not want anyone to misunderstand me as claiming violence is new. Vietnamese football violence has a long history, and I have witnessed darker eras. In the early 2000s, the V-League was notorious for destructive tackles, bloody matches, and players lunging in with both feet — a terrifying technique fans called the "death scythe." It took many years, many serious incidents, many heavy disciplinary sanctions, and finally the arrival of VAR for Vietnamese football to achieve its modern, cleaner image. The national team has benefited directly. The image of a disciplined, intelligent Vietnamese national team competing with sportsmanship at international tournaments has become part of its brand. A contract only dies when both parties believe it is dead. Likewise, an era of civility in Vietnamese football will only die when those who run the game — players, referees, federation officials — believe they no longer need to preserve it. There is an alternative angle, diametrically opposed to what fans are buzzing about, that deserves to be presented. It is the data angle. If we look only at the opening three rounds, the violence numbers seem enormous. But three rounds is a very small sample. Major violent incidents, the ones whose footage is endlessly replayed, are amplified by the media many times over. Meanwhile, the matches that pass cleanly — which are the majority — are simply ignored. Every number on the screen is a story never told in the corridors. And the biggest untold story in Vietnam right now is that the total frequency of serious violent incidents per game has, in fact, been declining over the past season. Players are more careful. They learn proper sliding technique, when to withdraw a leg, how to control themselves in fifty-fifty duels. It is just that incidents like Doan Van Hau's or Huynh Tan Sinh's are easily replayed, endlessly discussed, until they dominate an entire season. So before concluding that violence is returning, we need more rounds of data. If after ten rounds the number of tackles from behind, serious injuries, and red cards for violent play remain high, then we can speak of a true trend. One more thing I want to dissect, the submerged part of the iceberg that almost nobody mentions: the complete absence of questions about the responsibility of coaching staff and club management. I have not seen any media outlet ask: what did Dong Nai's head coach teach his players about discipline? Did he know that Huynh Tan Sinh kicked an opponent off the ball? Did he reprimand his players after the match? Nor have I seen anyone ask CAHN's management, who had to watch their star, Doan Van Hau, break an opponent's leg. Did they demand that Doan Van Hau publicly apologize to Doan Ngoc Tan? Or were they only concerned with protecting him from a heavy ban? In any league I have worked, those questions are routine. But in the V-League, collective responsibility — of clubs, of coaching staff — has virtually disappeared. The spotlight falls only on individual players or individual referees. This lack of collective accountability creates an environment where players feel they can play dirty without worrying about consequences for their team. They only have to worry about themselves. And when a player believes he only has himself to worry about, he acts on instinct rather than team discipline. He kicks cold when frustrated. He retaliates when provoked. He lets anger override reason. Huynh Tan Sinh had lost his calm when the game was already lost, and his cold kick was evidence of that loss of control. His coach should have been controlling the team's atmosphere, pulling out players who had lost control before they caused consequences. This brings me back to the Riyadh lesson I always remind young colleagues of when they ask about the sports industry. Money cannot buy FFP relief; it only buys time. In the Middle East, they poured billions of dollars into star signings to craft the image of a big league. But money did not erase financial fair play rules or AFC regulations. Money only delayed the moment the truth emerged. The same applies to the V-League. Money cannot buy VAR. VAR already exists. Money cannot buy good referees. The V-League can hire foreign officials. But money cannot buy a healthy playing culture. That culture can only be built through strict, consistent sanctions and system-wide accountability. Throwing money into infrastructure will not stop players from kicking opponents off the ball. Only the fear of severe punishment will. Let me return to Dinh Bac. After being fouled off the ball twice on September 20, the young CAHN player continued to play. He did not leave the field, did not dive, did not provoke his opponents. He simply stood up, rubbed the sore spot, and kept running. That behavior is precisely why I have a soft spot for him. But I also know what lies ahead if the disciplinary system remains soft on cold-kickers. I have seen too many talented young players have their careers destroyed by challenges that are no better than crimes. I have seen Tran Anh Khoa, I have seen Anh Hung, I have seen talents who never reached their peak because they spent two years recovering from horrific injuries. Dinh Bac could be one of the brightest talents Vietnamese football has produced in this decade. If the V-League cannot protect players like Dinh Bac, every story about the rise of Vietnamese football is an illusion. There is one suspicion that I believe Vietnamese media have not properly explored: whether the fact that Dinh Bac was fouled off the ball by two different Dong Nai players in one match suggests an instruction from the bench. In tactical analysis circles, multiple players targeting one key opponent is a clear sign of orchestration. It need not be a direct order from the head coach. Professional teams often hold short pre-match meetings where an assistant coach reminds defenders: their number 20 is the most dangerous, we must mark him aggressively. And in an environment lacking discipline like the V-League, aggressive marking can quickly become cold kicks. I am not saying Dong Nai's coach told his players to kick Dinh Bac off the ball. I am saying that without a culture of heavy punishment, these misunderstandings will keep occurring. Looking at the wider Southeast Asian context, I see a paradox. National teams in the region all want to play modern, well-organized, disciplined football, but their domestic leagues remain full of violence and thuggish tactical fouls. Players are obedient, polite, and emotionally controlled when wearing the national shirt. Back at their clubs, they shed that mask of discipline and reveal their wild instincts. This is not unique to Vietnam. I see it in Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia. But Vietnam is at a critical crossroads because its national team is in the golden peak of a golden generation. If this generation's players suffer career-threatening injuries due to domestic league violence, the loss to the entire football nation would be incalculable. Let me address an aspect nobody wants to discuss: the economic interest of broadcasters and media rights holders. Violent incidents like Doan Van Hau's or Huynh Tan Sinh's generate massive viewership, viral clips shared across social media, drawing attention even from non-football fans. This perversely creates an economic incentive: the more violence, the more viewership. Broadcasters do not advocate violence, but they are not unhappy when it happens, because it brings audiences. Sports news sites are the same: a cold kick analyzed with high-tech cameras generates more articles than a brilliant match or a beautiful victory. We must honestly admit this, because the very media pressure — despite good intentions — helped force the VFF Disciplinary Committee to convene, but also created a larger stage for violent acts. Duong Vu Lam, a veteran journalist, once observed accurately that ugly plays — like Huynh Tan Sinh's — are replayed endlessly by the media, spread very quickly and very widely, creating public pressure to the point that disciplinary bodies cannot afford not to act. This may be a beneficial mechanism for punishing wrongdoers. But it also means the disciplinary system is driven by media intensity rather than clear rules. If a player commits a cold kick in the middle of the season, in a low-profile match, will he be punished as severely as Huynh Tan Sinh? If not, our disciplinary system is unfair. I want to talk about what happens next. The September 21 emergency meeting may produce several rulings. Sanctions may include multi-match suspensions for Doan Van Hau, Huynh Tan Sinh, Ezequiel, and other violent players. But if these sanctions are not accompanied by a clear policy statement — that VFF is committed to protecting player safety through strict, consistent, transparent disciplinary regulations — then they are merely firefighting. Violence will temporarily subside for a round or two, then flare up again in another match, another round, with different names. This cycle has repeated throughout the V-League's two-decade history. If I had to choose one single thing to change to address the root of on-field violence, I would not choose harsher punishment for players. I would want to see a disciplinary tariff published at the start of each season: dangerous tackles from behind earn how many matches, cold kicks earn how many, stamps on a downed opponent earn how many. These regulations should be sent to all clubs, printed in the players' handbook, and repeated before each round. When players know the consequences in advance, they will think twice before acting. This is not a new invention. Major European leagues have long applied these principles. But in the V-League, sanctions seem to be decided case-by-case, driven by media pressure, lacking consistency. Another crucial point: players need to be educated about VAR — not just how it operates, but how it changes the unwritten rules on the pitch. Huynh Tan Sinh may not have known that VAR can see everything, from every angle, and that any off-ball kick, no matter how small, will be caught. But Ezequiel, a foreign player with experience in Brazil, cannot claim ignorance. He comes from a football culture where VAR has operated for years. Why then did he still stamp on someone's stomach? Because he thought he could get away with it. Because he grew accustomed to a disciplinary system that could ignore such behavior. If this season the V-League wants to send a different message, it must punish the first incidents severely to set an example. Referees also need to be protected from their own leniency. In an environment without strong baseline sanctions, referees tend to be objectified: fans jeer, players criticize, the press dissects every decision. As a result, referees adopt a mentality of avoiding big decisions, avoiding red cards in ambiguous situations. They protect themselves by making the safest choice — and the safest choice for a referee who does not want scrutiny is a yellow. Because yellow cards provoke fewer arguments than reds. But this leniency creates a vicious cycle: referees go easy, players play dirtier, media scrutiny intensifies, referees go even easier for fear of being judged wrong. To break this cycle, VFF needs mechanisms to protect referees when they make bold decisions, and to publicly reprimand them when they err. Le Vu Linh, Vo Hoai Thuong, and Nguyen Thanh Son — the officials in CAHN-Dong Nai — all need to be reviewed. Not to punish them, but to determine why the VAR system is not working as designed. Speaking of which, I recall a story from my time covering a small Asian league, where a player kicked an opponent off the ball but escaped VAR because the camera caught no angle. That player later confessed to a reporter that he had deliberately positioned himself outside camera range. This reveals a sad reality: if the disciplinary system does not have sufficient coverage, players will learn to evade it. They will not stop kicking cold; they will just kick cold where it is harder to detect. With VAR operating properly and a strict tariff, there will be no place to hide. But with VAR operating as it did in CAHN-Dong Nai — where an off-ball kick in front of the referee earned only a yellow — players will grow more confident that they can play dirty with impunity. As for Doan Van Hau, I have my own thoughts. I have followed his career from its early days, when he was a promising young player with excellent acceleration and intelligent positioning. No one can deny his talent. But talent does not exempt anyone from the consequences of dangerous play. When a national team star breaks an opponent's leg, it is worse than when an unknown player does the same, because the children watching will imitate him. They will think that if their idol can break someone's leg and continue playing, they can too. This may sound heavy, but I have seen too many young talents destroyed by violent behavior that they essentially copied from the adults on the pitch. If VFF is serious about solving this problem, it should publicly announce the disciplinary decisions of September 21 with detailed rationale. Transparency is a powerful weapon that many Asian federations are afraid to use. They fear that publicity will provoke controversy. But in reality, when sanctions are clearly explained, players understand why they were punished, clubs understand the boundaries, and fans gain more trust in the system's fairness. What the V-League lacks is not VAR or better referees; it is transparency in the disciplinary system. When a league's disciplinary system operates on principles of openness, transparency, and consistency, violence — an aberrant behavior that requires darkness to survive — will find no fertile ground. Teach players that VAR is a friend, not an enemy. VAR helps protect them from destructive tackles, helps referees make correct decisions, and makes the league fairer. But VAR is also an eye that never blinks. It sees everything, including the off-ball kicks the on-field referee misses. Dong Nai's players will soon learn this lesson through sanctions. Foreign players arriving in the V-League for the first time, like Ezequiel, will learn it through suspensions that may come with broken contracts. I have seen a contract collapse over a joke told in a corridor. And I believe there will be contracts collapsed by uncontrolled on-field behavior, if players do not grasp the consequences. Vietnamese football fans deserve a safe league where they can bring their children to the stadium without fear of witnessing career-ending challenges. Young players deserve protection from thuggery. And the national team deserves a domestic league that truly nurtures talent rather than destroying it with terrible tackles. The V-League has done many things right in the three seasons of VAR. Do not let the impulsive moments of a few individuals destroy it all. Writing from Shanghai, I remember summer days of my childhood in Vietnam, street football matches and endless arguments about which team was best. I love Vietnamese football, not because it is perfect, but because it has passionate people, genuine talents, and a real ambition to rise to continental level. But that ambition will never be realized if players live in fear of having their legs broken every time they step onto the pitch. The September 21 emergency meeting is not the end. It is merely the start of a long process to determine whether Vietnamese football is genuinely serious about protecting its players. The sanctions produced by that meeting will speak louder than any statement from VFF leadership. If sanctions are heavy and resolute, violence will recede. If they are light and lenient, violence will return stronger. The history of Vietnamese football has proven this many times. I am not one for moral grandstanding. I work in football because I love the matches, the stories, the people. But there are fundamental values whose loss would mean football is no longer football. Player safety is one such value. A league cannot grow sustainably when players treat each other as enemies on a battlefield. Football is a contact sport — yes — but it is not an arena where you may destroy an opponent by any means. When a moment leaves the orbit of a true football match and becomes pure thuggery, the whole system must speak up. VAR spoke up in Huynh Tan Sinh's case — it recommended a review. The referee did not listen. That is when the disciplinary system — not VAR — must take over and deliver the final verdict. In the coming days, after the VFF Disciplinary Committee announces its decisions, I will keep watching the reactions of clubs and fans. If clubs protest the sanctions, that shows how deeply the culture of violence is rooted. If fans feel the sanctions are fair, that shows spectators are wiser than we think. But regardless of the outcome, one thing is certain: this problem will not resolve overnight. It demands the effort of everyone involved in Vietnamese football — referees, players, coaches, and administrators — to build a foundation of healthy playing culture. And I, as a sports journalist who has witnessed many ups and downs of Vietnamese football, will continue to follow and document this story with the greatest honesty I can muster.