V-League 2026-2027 On-Pitch Violence: Four Incidents, Three Matches, and the Red Cards That Were Never Shown

Dong Nai Stadium. The ball had already flown to the right flank, nearly twenty metres from the point of contact. No one in that area was still playing the ball. Yet Huynh Tan Sinh still lunged in, studs first, driving into the back of Nguyen Dinh Bac's calf. The Cong An Ha Noi forward went down. Tan Sinh did not stop. One more movement, and the Dong Nai centre-back's boot swept into exactly where Dinh Bac had just fallen. Referee Le Vu Linh produced a yellow card.

That was September 20. In the same match, before Tan Sinh twice "played the man instead of the ball", defender Le Van Son had also thrown an elbow straight at Dinh Bac.

Two incidents in one match. Not long before that, in Round 2, Doan Van Hau broke the leg of Doan Ngoc Tan, and foreign player Ezeqiel Santos Da Silva stamped on the stomach of Vo Huu Viet Hoang. Four ugly incidents in three matches. A professional league, an invested VAR system, and four red cards that were never shown at the right moment — or never shown at all.

Since the day I learned that dressing rooms lie through silence, I also learned something else: the pitch tells the truth. It recounts everything, including what the cameras never capture. And in this V-League season, the pitch is telling a very long story.

CONTEXT: A SEASON RUNNING FASTER THAN DISCIPLINE

V-League 2026-2027 kicked off with a denser schedule than any recent season. Fixture congestion, relegation pressure, continental qualification pressure — all of it poured into the players' legs over a shorter window. When legs tire, reflexes slow, and decisions on the pitch get pushed toward raw instinct.

Round 2 was marked by two challenges that stirred public opinion. Centre-back Doan Van Hau (Cong An Ha Noi) broke the leg of midfielder Doan Ngoc Tan (The Cong Viettel). Foreign player Ezeqiel Santos Da Silva (Nam Dinh) stamped directly onto the stomach of Vo Huu Viet Hoang (SHB Da Nang). Both incidents fell outside the scope of a normal challenge for the ball. The ball was elsewhere. The boot and the studs were still aimed at the opponent.

On September 20, at Dong Nai Stadium, two similar situations repeated within a single match between Dong Nai and Cong An Ha Noi. Le Van Son used an elbow. Huynh Tan Sinh used his studs, twice, on the same target: Nguyen Dinh Bac.

After this run of incidents, with the risk of on-pitch violence resurfacing and damaging the image of the V-League, representatives of the organising committee, VPF and VFF met directly with the VFF Referees Board. In that meeting, representatives of VFF, VPF and the V-League organising committee demanded that referees apply the laws correctly, uphold the league's discipline, and prevent violent conduct on the pitch.

The phrase "apply the laws correctly" can be understood in its narrowest sense: no missed fouls, no missed cards. This is the error referee Le Vu Linh committed in the Dong Nai versus Cong An Ha Noi match on September 20. In the situation where centre-back Huynh Tan Sinh "played the man instead of the ball" against Dinh Bac, Le Vu Linh used only a yellow card. He did not use a red card, even though Tan Sinh fouled Dinh Bac off the ball twice.

The dressing room has no cameras, but it has whispers. And in this case, the whispers did not come from the dressing rooms of the two teams. They came from the closed meeting room of the referees board.

CORE: DISMANTLING A MISSED CALL

To understand why a challenge like Tan Sinh's slipped through, the incident must be separated into four layers. The first layer is the player. The second is the referee. The third is the VAR team. The fourth is the league's disciplinary body. If any one of these four layers had functioned correctly, the incident would have been handled. In the Dong Nai — CAHN match, all four let it through.

Start with the player. In football, there is a type of foul known as "off-the-ball play" — a player commits a foul when the ball has already left the challenge zone, often to retaliate, to warn, or to send a signal. Its defining feature is that it does not aim to win the ball. It aims to affect the person. That is why modern football law classifies it as violent conduct, with a minimum sanction of a direct red card.

In Tan Sinh's case, there is a notable detail: he made contact with Dinh Bac twice. The first time while Dinh Bac was still standing. The second time after Dinh Bac had fallen and was trying to get up. The second contact is the important signal. It is no longer a reflex within a challenge. It is conduct continuing after the opponent has lost his footing. In VAR assessment criteria across many European leagues, the situation of "repeated contact on a player who has already gone down" is almost automatically escalated to a red card.

The second layer is the referee. Le Vu Linh produced a yellow card. From a professional standpoint, the yellow card was not wrong in the sense of "a foul was punished". It was wrong in degree. A referee may not see everything, or may see it but assess it as less severe. Tan Sinh's case falls into the second category: there was a signal of handling, but the sanction did not match the conduct.

The third layer is the VAR team. In the Dong Nai — CAHN match, the VAR team consisted of Vo Hoai Thuong and Nguyen Thanh Son. The standard VAR protocol has four steps: check, review, advise, decide. The VAR referee checks every situation that could lead to a goal, a direct red card or mistaken identity. If a clear error is found, they call the referee to the monitor. The final decision rests with the referee. But the VAR referee has a duty to advise.

There are two scenarios here. Scenario one: the VAR team advised, and the referee overruled them. In that case, the fault lies with the referee, and the VAR team fulfilled its duty. Scenario two: the VAR team did not advise. In that case, responsibility lies with both sides, and in the view of long-serving refereeing figures, the VAR team should also be sanctioned.

This is precisely the question raised by former VFF Vice President for Professional Affairs and former Head of the VFF Referees Board, Duong Vu Lam, in an exchange with a Dan tri reporter after the match. He said: "Referee Le Vu Linh missed a card in relation to this incident. Huynh Tan Sinh played the man instead of the ball too blatantly, yet did not receive a red card."

Duong Vu Lam also raised the question of cross-checking responsibility: "If Tan Sinh is retrospectively banned for this foul, then referee Le Vu Linh should likewise have his whistle suspended. In addition, the responsibility of the VAR team must be clarified. If the VAR team advised the referee but was overruled, then the VAR team fulfilled its duty. Conversely, if the VAR team did not advise referee Le Vu Linh that a red card should be used for the off-the-ball foul in question, the VAR referees must also be sanctioned."

The key point in Lam's remarks lies in the word "likewise". He is speaking of a principle of symmetry. If a player is retrospectively punished after the match for violent conduct, then a referee who missed that conduct must also face a corresponding level of discipline. One side alone cannot bear responsibility.

The fourth layer is the league's disciplinary body. This is the layer that determines post-match sanctions, commonly called retrospective punishment. This mechanism exists to handle situations that referees missed on the pitch. But it has a structural weakness: it only functions after media coverage and public opinion have grown loud enough. If a similar incident occurs in a match that is not widely broadcast, or for which no clip circulates, the probability of retrospective punishment drops sharply.

That is why I always keep a notebook. My tracking sheet records every challenge showing signs of violence in the matches I follow, along with the timing, the position, and what happened afterwards. This notebook shows one fairly clear thing: in many recent seasons, the number of violent challenges that received retrospective punishment has always been lower than the number of violent challenges that actually occurred. That gap is the disciplinary void.

My pen needs no ink, only a gap. And the disciplinary void is the largest gap any league can have.

WHY A MISSED CALL IS MORE DANGEROUS THAN VIOLENCE

In this profession, there is an old question I still put to people working in refereeing: what makes on-pitch violence spread?

The answer does not lie in the number of ill-tempered players. It lies in the probability of punishment. Players are decision-makers within fractions of a second, and their decisions are shaped by the likelihood of being punished. If a player believes an elbow to an opponent's back has about a seven-in-ten chance of going undetected, he will throw the elbow. If the probability of punishment is ten out of ten, he will reconsider.

The V-League is in the opposite situation. Four incidents in three matches, and not one was correctly handled on the pitch. The signal sent from that is very simple: you can do it, as long as you do it discreetly enough.

In the Dong Nai — CAHN match there is one more detail worth analysing more closely. Nguyen Dinh Bac was the target of both incidents. Le Van Son used an elbow. Huynh Tan Sinh used his studs. Two different players, the same team, both targeting one man, in one match. In football, there is a term for this phenomenon: "marking with flesh" — using physical contact to cool down an important attacking player from the opening minutes, causing him to lose confidence when he receives the ball.

I have no internal evidence to say this was a directive from the coaching staff. No document proves that, and I will not write it without documents. But I have enough field experience to recognise a pattern. When two players from the same team, in two different positions, both target the same opponent in the same match, that is no longer random. That is a pattern.

And a pattern only exists where an environment allows it to exist.

THE REFEREE HANDLING PROCESS AND THE PROBLEM OF TRANSPARENCY

Another paradox that few people know: specific disciplinary rulings for referees are usually not publicly announced. No press release, no press conference, no names. Only absence.

Former Head of the VFF Referees Board Duong Vu Lam revealed an indirect way of checking: "but just watch the referee list in the following rounds and you will know whether the referees involved have had their whistles suspended. If they are not assigned in the rounds immediately following the round just played, the likelihood is high that they are being disciplined."

This is a common way of operating in many leagues, not just the V-League. The purpose is to protect referees from public pressure. But it has a side effect: it renders the entire disciplinary system opaque. No one knows who was sanctioned and who was not. No one knows the severity. And because no one knows, deterrence is reduced.

I have followed referee assignment lists across many rounds in many seasons, purely to test this hypothesis. The results are fairly consistent: after matches with major controversy, a few names disappear from the assignment board for one to three rounds, then reappear. No announcement. No explanation. Only silence.

Silence is a form of information. But it is not a form of transparent discipline.

The contract is signed, but the printer never releases a single page. And in football, when the paperwork never gets printed, the memory of the error fades very quickly.

CONTRARIAN ANGLE: THE REASONABLE SIDE OF THOSE CRITICISED

Here I have to pause for a beat. Because if I only write about refereeing errors, this article becomes a one-sided indictment — and a one-sided indictment helps Vietnamese football not at all.

There is a portion of truth on the side of those being criticised.

First, referees are not machines. A referee must track 22 players for 90 minutes across more than 7,000 square metres, with vision blocked by players' bodies and by his own angle. In Tan Sinh's case, if Le Vu Linh was standing behind the Dong Nai player, he would not have seen the position of the studs. That is entirely possible.

Second, VAR is not magic. VAR only handles four specific categories of incidents, and its most important principle is "clear and obvious error". The word "clear" means VAR does not replace the referee's judgement. If a situation is in the grey zone — for example a challenge that the referee saw and punished with a yellow card — VAR generally does not intervene. This is a rule deliberately designed to prevent VAR from turning every match into a three-hour meeting.

Third, publicly suspending referees can backfire. A referee placed under public scrutiny tends to produce more cards to protect himself. The consequence is matches chopped up by whistles, and normal challenges punished too. That does not make football cleaner, only slower.

Fourth, and this is the least-discussed point: on-pitch violence is not only a moral issue. It is also a physical and scheduling issue. When a team must play three matches in eight days, players arrive half a beat late to the ball. Half a beat late means that instead of winning the ball, they win the leg. In seasons with dense schedules, collision injuries always rise, and so does the rate of serious fouls.

These truths do not erase the referee's responsibility. But they place that responsibility in its real context — not in a closed meeting room, but on a long pitch, under the pressure of thousands of spectators and of a season running too fast.

THE QUESTION IS ABOUT THE SYSTEM, NOT THE PEOPLE

If the four incidents across three matches are placed side by side, a common thread emerges. All four occurred when the ball had left the challenge zone. All four targeted the player, not the ball. And none was correctly handled immediately.

This overlap is not statistically random. When one type of foul repeats several times in a short period, the cause usually lies in the system rather than in individuals. And the system here has three parts: instructions to referees, the VAR checking process, and the post-match handling mechanism.

Instructions to referees need to be clearer in the grey zone. The phrase "apply the laws correctly" issued by VPF, VFF and V-League organising committee leaders in their meeting with the VFF Referees Board is a correct directive. But a directive needs to be converted into specific criteria. For example: any repeated contact on a player who has already gone down is handled as a red card. Or: any challenge made when the ball has left the challenge zone by more than five metres is treated as violent conduct.

The VAR checking process needs more transparency at the communication stage. In top European leagues, audio recordings of the exchange between the referee and the VAR team are released in certain specific cases. This release is not intended to criticise anyone, but to let spectators see how the decision-making mechanism operates. In the V-League, this stage remains a black box. When the black box does not open, suspicion generates itself to fill the void.

The post-match handling mechanism needs a principle of symmetry. If a player is retrospectively punished for violent conduct, then the error of missing that conduct must also be handled at a corresponding level, and the criteria for handling must be published before the season. This is precisely what Duong Vu Lam emphasised when speaking about the responsibility of the VAR team.

A cocktail in the VIP room is also evidence. And in this case, the evidence lies in what is not said in closed meetings.

WHEN SPECTATORS BECOME WITNESSES

Based on my experience following V-League matches across many seasons, I have noticed one thing: Vietnamese spectators are increasingly sharp at reading challenges. Slow-motion clips circulate on social media within hours of a match. Comments point out the position of the studs, the direction of the elbow, sometimes more accurately than the referee's report.

This is a force that has not been properly used. Major leagues around the world are beginning to adopt mechanisms to receive evidence from the public regarding violent conduct that referees missed. The V-League could move in a similar direction, with a dedicated unit receiving clips from public sources and cross-checking them against official footage.

The pandemic exposed what football had kept hidden: the numbers. This season, the numbers are showing a clear trend: serious fouls are rising, while direct red cards are not rising correspondingly.

That gap is where violence lives.

CONCLUSION: A QUESTION WITH NO ANSWER IN THE MEETING ROOM

The meeting between representatives of the organising committee, VPF, VFF and the VFF Referees Board came at the right time. The demand that referees apply the laws correctly, uphold the league's discipline and prevent violent conduct is a demand no one can oppose.

But discipline is not built in a meeting room. It is built in the moment a referee puts his hand on his pocket and decides to produce a red card, amid the jeers of thousands of spectators, when the clock has already passed stoppage time. It is built in the moment a VAR team decides to press the button and call the referee to the monitor, knowing that decision will interrupt the match for three more minutes. And it is built in the moment a disciplinary body announces sanctions for both sides — player and referee — instead of only one.

Vietnamese football is at a stage where every small decision can set a precedent for many seasons to come. Four incidents in three matches have posed a question that cannot be answered in any meeting room: when discipline is hollowed out from within, who will be the first to step forward and say that the referee's shirt also has its limits?