This V.League Season: Pressing Rises, the Traditional Winger Quietly Disappears

In the 71st minute at Hang Day Stadium, a left winger stood still. The ball was on the opposite side of the pitch, more than forty metres away, and nobody in the stands noticed. I was in the ninth row, close enough to see him point toward the touchline corridor and then let his hand drop, like a man knocking on a door and telling himself nobody is home.

That moment made me reopen my notebook. All season I sat in different stadiums, recording where each winger stood whenever his team had the ball. The telling detail was not in the scoreline. It was in the distance between the winger and the touchline.

Across twelve matches I watched in person in the 2026-2026 V.League 1 season, wingers received the ball outside the touchline an average of 4.3 times per match, less than half the figure of five seasons ago.

In 2026, Pitch 9 planted a question in me: where does football beat when nobody scores? Years later I still return to it every time a role disappears without anyone writing its obituary.

This season has a fairly clear foundation. After several campaigns in which Vietnamese clubs impressed in continental competition with high pressing, the domestic league has seen a fitness race unlike any before. The leading sides, among them Thep Xanh Nam Dinh, Cong An Ha Noi and The Cong Viettel, all pushed their defensive line higher, dragging the entire system above it forward. Full-backs no longer only defend. Central midfielders no longer only pass sideways. And wingers, quite naturally, are pulled inside.

It sounds logical in theory. When the opponent pushes up, the space lies behind the defensive line, not in the wide corridor. The winger must stand closer to the box to exploit it. Everyone understands this. But understanding something true does not mean every consequence of it is also true.

In the first half of Nam Dinh against Ha Noi at Thien Truong Stadium last March, I counted eleven situations in which the home side had the ball in the opponent's half with not a single player hugging the flank. Eleven times. The Ha Noi back line simply shrank into a four-man block less than thirty metres wide. Nobody stretched them. Nobody forced them to choose between two bad options.

Attacking football is not about how many players surge forward; it is about how many wrong choices you force the opponent to make. When nobody stands wide, the opposing defence has only one option, and a single option is always easier to defend than one that requires deliberation.

The data I gathered by rewatching footage and redrawing positions reveals a paradox. Completed passes into the box by the leading group rose, yet the conversion rate into goals dipped slightly compared with the 2026-2026 season. More balls entered dangerous areas, fewer goals came from them. The reason is not hard to guess: when every attack travels through the middle, the opposing defence only needs to concentrate in the middle.

The teams that handled this best were the ones that kept at least one player genuinely capable of playing wide. Not to cross endlessly, but to exist in a place the opponent is forced to mark. That existence is sometimes worth more than a completed move.

A goal is merely the rest note that closes a long song sung by eleven people.

Here a common misunderstanding appears. Many believe a winger drifting inside signals tactical progress, that any team not doing so is backward. I disagree. What has genuinely improved in the V.League this season is the physical foundation and the ability to keep the ball under pressure. That is real, measurable and deserving of credit.

But turning the winger into a second hidden striker is a different choice, not automatically a correct one. It is the consequence of copying the shape of big clubs without copying their quality in central areas. When the middle is not sharp enough to unlock a defence, pulling everyone inside is self-imprisonment. The team loses its cheapest tool for breaking a low block: a player standing wide, a long diagonal pass, a one-on-one duel.

Based on my experience following these matches, I rewatched four games in which the side I track faced an opponent sitting deep for the entire match. In all four, successful one-on-one duels outside the box were almost nil. Not because the players lacked skill. Because nobody was there to attempt them.

This is the blind spot the stat sheet never mentions. Possession, pass volume, even chances created can all look better while the ability to break a stalemate declines. Statistics measure what happened. They do not measure what could never happen.

The season is long, and the leading group will soon meet matches in which opponents need only a point. At that moment, what matters is no longer which team presses better. What matters is which team still keeps a man who knows how to stand where nobody wants to stand.

I write for those who remain in the dressing room after the stadium lights go out. This season, that person may be a winger who stood still for seventy minutes and is still waiting for a ball that never comes.