Three Candidates Contest the VFF Chairman Seat: When Bank Money Walks Into the Boardroom

I have sat in the VFF press room exactly four times in eighteen years of working in Vietnam. Never before have I seen a candidate list read like an indictment of power structure. On October 21, when VFF published the candidate list for the 10th-term Congress (2026–2030), what struck me was not the three names contesting the Chairman seat. It was the number six. Six candidates for the Vice Chairman for Finance and Sponsorship Mobilization. One seat, six people. Meanwhile, the Vice Chairman for Communications and Foreign Affairs seat had exactly one candidate, uncontested. That is the entire story of Vietnamese football for years to come, compressed into two numbers placed side by side.

Let me reconstruct the context for those who have not been following. VFF, the Vietnam Football Federation, is preparing for its 10th-term Congress in January 2027. Term IX (2026–2026) is drawing to a close. The nomination deadline was October 19, with the list published two days later. Three names were entered for the Chairman race: Tran Quoc Tuan, the incumbent who has guided VFF through a turbulent term; Nguyen Duc Thuy, known as bau Thuy, a construction businessman linked to LPBank, entering football politics for the first time; and Nguyen Xuan Vu, the insider, currently Vice Chairman for Communications and Foreign Affairs.

But what I want you to look at more closely is the picture beneath. The Vice Chairman for Professional Affairs seat has three candidates: Tran Huy Duc, a VFF Executive Committee member for term IX; Tran Quoc Tuan, the incumbent Chairman; and Tran Anh Tu, VFF Vice Chairman for term IX and simultaneously Chairman of the VPF board, the company that operates Vietnam's professional leagues. The Vice Chairman for Finance and Sponsorship Mobilization seat has six candidates: Nguyen Duc Thuy, Vu Quoc Khanh, Tran Anh Tu, Nguyen Trung Kien, Le Van Thanh, and one more name in the full list that the press has reported. The Vice Chairman for Communications and Foreign Affairs seat: only Nguyen Xuan Vu. No one else.

Read it again. Six people for the money seat. One person for the voice seat. That is not an administrative coincidence. It is a map of motives published publicly that no VFF editorial board wanted to draw.

In eighteen years of following Vietnamese football from the position of a foreigner writing for domestic readers, I have learned one thing: here, elections are not decided by ballots but by candidate lists. The moment the list is published, the result is eighty percent written. The rest is ceremony. And in this list, there is a detail that I have not seen any newspaper in Vietnam exploit to its proper extent: Tran Quoc Tuan is contesting both the Chairman seat and the Vice Chairman for Professional Affairs seat. Nguyen Duc Thuy is contesting both the Chairman seat and the Vice Chairman for Finance seat.

Two men. Four seats. This is the first time in VFF history that two leading candidates have simultaneously placed bets on two portfolios. And neither of them has explained why.

That is a sign of insecurity, not confidence. An incumbent Chairman never files for the number two seat if he believes he will win the number one seat.

Let me analyze this from the perspective of organizational strategy, because Vietnamese football is at a crossroads and what happens in the VFF boardroom in January 2027 will determine everything from how the national team selects coaches to how V.League clubs share broadcasting revenue over the next five years.

First, let us talk about Tran Quoc Tuan. He is the incumbent Chairman, having led VFF through term IX. During that term, what did Vietnamese football experience? The national team reached the third round of World Cup qualifiers for the first time, a feat no one dared dream of before 2026. The U23 team won the Asian runner-up title in 2026 under coach Park Hang-seo, a memory an entire generation of fans still invokes. But also during that term, V.League was hit hard by the pandemic, clubs struggled financially, and refereeing issues became a hotter topic than ever before. Tran Quoc Tuan is the man who bears responsibility for both the successes and the failures.

His filing for the Vice Chairman for Professional Affairs seat is a move I read as an admission of risk. If he wins the Chairman seat, he will have to withdraw from the Professional Affairs seat, and people will ask why he put himself in a position to withdraw. If he loses the Chairman seat, he can still retain a position in the Standing Committee as Vice Chairman for Professional Affairs, a seat of power that directly manages the national team. It is an insurance strategy. But in organizational politics, insurance is a statement. It says: I am not sure I will win.

I have witnessed something similar in South American football federations during the 2000s. When an incumbent president begins contesting an additional vice-presidential seat, that is when regional federations have smelled change. In my native Argentina, in 2026, a federation leader who had held power for twenty years suddenly filed for a permanent committee seat while contesting the presidency. He lost both. The lesson is clear: when you start needing a fallback, you have lost your invincibility.

But Tran Quoc Tuan is not the only one playing the two-seat game. Nguyen Duc Thuy, bau Thuy, is doing the same. He is contesting the Chairman seat and the Vice Chairman for Finance seat. For someone entering football politics for the first time, this is a logically sound move: if you cannot win the highest seat, at least you must control the wallet. But it also reveals something about how bau Thuy views VFF. He is not here to do politics. He is here to manage cash flow.

And this is the key point I want you to remember: LPBank, where bau Thuy has links, is currently the main sponsor of V.League. A VFF Chairman candidate is simultaneously the man behind the main sponsor of the national professional league.

Read that sentence again. Slowly.

In any sports governance system in the world, this is a high-level conflict of interest. Not because bau Thuy is a bad person. But because the power structure itself creates the problem. If he sits in the VFF Chairman seat and LPBank is the main sponsor of V.League, who will negotiate the sponsorship contract? Who will determine the value of the sponsorship package? Who will oversee whether LPBank receives preferential treatment on broadcasting rights? The answer is him, or someone he appoints.

In Europe, UEFA has clear rules on conflicts of interest in federation leadership positions. A person with a direct financial interest in a league managed by the federation must declare it and in many cases must recuse themselves from related decisions. In Vietnam, I have not seen any such rule published publicly. And that is a gap that no candidate on the list has addressed.

But let us be fair. Bau Thuy is not the first to bring private money into Vietnamese football. Bau Duc did it with Hoang Anh Gia Lai since the 2000s. Bau Hien with Hanoi FC. Bau Thang with Dong Tam Long An. Vietnamese football has been built on private money for a long time, and these bosses have brought what the state could not: stadiums, academies, and expensive foreign contracts. Bau Thuy entering VFF is a logical step in the privatization of football governance, a process that has been happening quietly for two decades.

What I object to is not the presence of private money. It is the absence of transparency rules that accompany private money.

Look at the number six. Six candidates for the Finance seat. Among them is Vu Quoc Khanh, CEO of LPBank. The same bank, two candidates in the same term, one for Chairman, one for Finance. This is no longer coincidence. This is a strategy. LPBank is placing bets on two positions to ensure that regardless of the election outcome, the bank still has a voice in managing Vietnamese football's finances.

And there is Le Van Thanh, Chairman of Dong Luc company, a business in the construction sector. Nguyen Trung Kien, former Vice Chairman for Finance in term IV, a figure returning from the past. Tran Anh Tu, who has held both the VFF Vice Chairman seat and the VPF Chairmanship, now contesting the Finance seat as well. Each name on this list is a network of interests, and all of them are looking at the same thing: control over the cash flow of Vietnamese football.

Meanwhile, the Communications and Foreign Affairs seat has only one candidate. Nguyen Xuan Vu, the incumbent Vice Chairman, uncontested. He is the only person on the entire list guaranteed a seat in the Standing Committee for term X, regardless of the Chairman election outcome. That is an absolutely safe position, and it says something about how the forces within VFF allocate interests. Communications and Foreign Affairs is the seat with the least economic power. No one wants to contest it. Finance is the seat with the most economic power. Six people want to contest it.

This is the nature of every organization: people compete for real power, and leave ceremonial seats alone.

Now let us talk about the third person in the Chairman race. Nguyen Xuan Vu. He is the insider, having sat on the VFF Standing Committee for term IX as Vice Chairman for Communications and Foreign Affairs. He has no business background, no bank behind him, no construction company. He is a professional sports official, the kind of person Asian football federations typically have in leadership positions. His contesting the Chairman seat while being guaranteed the Vice Chairman for Communications seat is a smart move: he has nothing to lose. If he wins, he is Chairman. If he loses, he is still Vice Chairman.

But I do not think Nguyen Xuan Vu is a real candidate for the Chairman seat. I think he is a candidate set up to split votes, or to create a third option in case the other two candidates tie in the Executive Committee vote. In organizational politics, the third candidate is often the person pre-agreed by factions to serve as a mediator. And with someone already guaranteed a seat, he is the perfect candidate for that role.

Let me tell you a story from my experience. In 2026, I went to Kazan for the World Cup. On the night of June 27, I witnessed South Korea defeat Germany 2-0. Germany had 74% possession, 28 shots to South Korea's 7, but conceded both goals in the 90+3rd and 90+6th minutes. I wrote the article "The German philosophy died on Guardiola's mud" and was mocked by European colleagues. But two days later, an ESPN editor called me. The lesson I drew was not about football. It was about how systems collapse: not because opponents are stronger, but because they cannot see their own blind spots.

VFF is the same. For many years, its governance system was based on balance between bosses and state officials. Bau Duc, bau Hien, bau Thang, each had a sphere of influence. VFF was where these interests met and compromised. But bau Thuy comes with a different model: he does not just have a club, he has a bank sponsoring the entire league. That is a different level of influence. And VFF has no mechanism to deal with that level.

This is the blind spot that no candidate on the list addresses. No one talks about financial transparency rules. No one talks about disclosing assets and related interests. No one talks about term limits. No one talks about independent auditing of sponsorship contracts. All we have is a list of names and a congress date.

But there is another detail I want you to notice. According to the process, the candidate list must pass review by the Ministry of Home Affairs and the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism before being officially confirmed. This is an important control gate, and it could change everything. If a candidate is disqualified on legal or reputational grounds, the entire balance could be reversed. And with the period from October 2026 to January 2027, there is plenty of time for these decisions to be made.

I have seen this happen in Argentina. In 2026, a candidate expected to win the AFA presidency was disqualified at the last minute over a legal issue from ten years earlier. The result was a re-election that dragged on for six months, and Argentine football lost a development cycle. In Vietnam, with a federation in transition and a league needing stability, a similar incident could have much larger consequences.

So what will happen?

I will make my prediction, and I will put it here so you can come back and check on me in two years.

First: Tran Quoc Tuan will not win re-election to the Chairman seat.

The reason is not that he has done a bad job. It is that his contesting the additional Vice Chairman for Professional Affairs seat is a sign that he knows he is in a weak position. In organizational politics, when an incumbent leader starts needing a fallback, Executive Committee members read it as a signal to shift. They will not vote for a man who has already prepared himself mentally for defeat.

Second: Bau Thuy will not win immediately in this term, but will control the Finance seat.

This is a prediction that could be wrong, and I admit it. But I think the VFF Executive Committee, with the conservative instincts of a state organization, will not hand the Chairman seat to a private businessman on his first attempt. They will give him the Finance seat, where he can demonstrate competence, and wait for the next term. That is how Vietnamese organizations typically handle newcomers: give them a seat, but not the highest one.

Third: Nguyen Xuan Vu will be the next Chairman.

Not because he is the strongest candidate. But because he is the safest candidate for a divided Executive Committee. He has no conflict of interest with LPBank, no construction company, no history of disputes with the bosses. He is the perfect mediator. And in an organization where the two strongest candidates distrust each other, the mediator usually wins.

But where could I be wrong?

I could be wrong because I am reading too much organizational strategy into a process that may in reality simply be a vote according to instructions. If the major forces have pre-agreed, the candidate list is merely a formality and the result was determined before publication. In that case, all my analysis of the power balance is meaningless.

I could also be wrong because I am applying a Western model to a system where personal relationships matter more than rules. In Vietnam, a phone call between two people can change an election outcome faster than any analysis of mine. I have learned this over many years, and I am still not used to it.

And I could be wrong because I am underestimating change. Perhaps the VFF Executive Committee genuinely wants change. Perhaps they are tired of the old model and are ready to hand power to someone like bau Thuy, who can bring the financial resources Vietnamese football needs. If so, my prediction will be completely wrong.

But whatever the outcome, one thing I am certain of: this election will shape Vietnamese football for the next five years in ways no one can fully predict.

Think about what is at stake. The Vice Chairman for Professional Affairs seat will determine who selects the national team coach, who builds the youth development pathway, who decides on player naturalization, who negotiates with Asian confederations and FIFA. The Vice Chairman for Finance seat will determine the value of sponsorship contracts, how broadcasting revenue is shared, the level of investment in academies, and how VFF responds to club financial crises. The Chairman seat will determine all of the above plus Vietnam's standing in Asian football.

And all of this is being decided by a group of people whose names we know but whose platforms we do not.

That is why I am writing this article. Not to predict the outcome. But to ask the question: why has none of the candidates published their platform? Why is there no public debate about the future of Vietnamese football? Why are fans, who contribute millions of dong each year buying tickets and shirts, not allowed to know who will lead the organization they love?

In Argentine football, federation elections are public events. Candidates debate on television. Clubs vote openly. The press dissects every detail. In Vietnam, a VFF Chairman election takes place in silence, with a press release and a list of names.

I am not saying the Argentine model is better. Argentine football has gone through governance crises far worse than Vietnam's. But I am saying that a more transparent process would produce a stronger federation. And a stronger federation would produce a stronger football nation.

When I wrote about Nguyen Van Quyet in 2026, I said Hanoi FC should sell him to rebuild the academy. I was attacked by hundreds of fans. But a year later, that very generation of young players led U23 Vietnam to the Asian runner-up title. I do not say that to boast that I was right. I say it to remind you that uncomfortable opinions are often the ones that need to be heard.

And my uncomfortable opinion today is this: VFF is preparing to enter a term in which bank money will sit in the boardroom, and none of the candidates are talking about it.

Six candidates for the Finance seat. One candidate for the Communications seat. Two candidates contesting two seats each. An incumbent Chairman preparing a fallback. A banking businessman buying a ticket into the stadium. And a mediator waiting in the wings.

That is the picture you need to see. Not because it is attractive. But because it is true.

When the 10th-term Congress takes place in January 2027, remember this article. Remember that someone told you the candidate list is a map of motives, not an administrative document. Remember that someone pointed out the overlap between LPBank and bau Thuy before anyone else did. And remember that someone asked why no one is talking about transparency rules.

I may be wrong about the outcome. I may be wrong about the winner. But I will not be wrong about the nature of the problem: Vietnamese football is at a crossroads, and the road it chooses will be decided by people we have never heard say a single word about their vision.

That is why I write. Not to predict. But to force someone to answer.

And if you are one of the six candidates for the Vice Chairman for Finance seat, I have a question for you: what will you do to ensure that LPBank's money cannot buy influence over VFF decisions?

I am waiting for the answer. So is all of Vietnamese football.