Why Vietnam Women's Volleyball Slid Backward in a Year: The Price of a Season Without a Bench

The lights at My Dinh stadium were still on, but I stayed longer than usual by the technical bench after Vietnam women's national volleyball team's match at the Asiad, and realized I was looking at an empty bench — literally. Not because the coaching staff failed to call up more players, but because they genuinely had no options left: a middle blocker out for family reasons, an opposite with an injury, a middle blocker with a serious injury, an outside hitter who left for personal reasons. Within one year, the team lost roughly a quarter of its starting lineup, and now people ask why we lost to Indonesia twice, lost to Philippines, lost to Kazakhstan.

The easiest answer is always individual blame: blame the opposite, blame the captain, blame coach Nguyen Tuan Kiet for not making substitutions at the right time. But after following this team for many years, I see that this year we are repeating the very question we mocked in another sport last year — asking "why did they play badly" instead of "why do they no longer have anyone to send in."

Asiad 20 was where this chain of controversy began. In the semifinal, Tran Thi Thanh Thuy scored 36 points — a number that does not look bad on the stat sheet, but anyone who actually watched the match knew she was attacking slowly, heavily, and getting blocked repeatedly. The team finished 7th, below the top-4 expectation set by fans at the start of the year. Earlier, at the AVC Cup, Vietnam had held the title three times in a row, and this time stopped at 3rd, failing to reach the final. At the SEA V.Cup, the team was 2nd in stage 1 but lost 0-3 in stage 2. At the Asian Championship, only one win. Four tournaments, four downward directions. This is not a unlucky loss; this is a trajectory.

The scariest thing is not the number of losses, but where they happened

In volleyball, losing to China, Japan, and South Korea is normal. But Vietnam's losses to Indonesia twice, Philippines, and Kazakhstan are the data points that need analysis. These are opponents we confidently beat three years ago. One loss is an accident; four straight losses to mid-tier opponents is a structural signal.

I reviewed the match footage of the loss to Indonesia, and saw a repeating image: attacks at position 4 and position 2 kept getting blocked. Position 4 is the left wing, position 2 is the right wing — the two wings of the offense. When both wings are stopped, the set is forced to the middle. The result: Bich Thuy, a middle blocker, became one of the team's top scorers.

In a healthy Asian quick-attack system, the middle creates pressure to free the wings; in Vietnam's team this year, the middle became an escape valve. That is a structural inversion.

The phrase "easy to read, easy to counter" repeated by commentators is not a judgment about physical strength. Strength does not change much in a year. What changed is how opponents understand us. When the outside hitter attacks slowly, when the set to the wing is so predictable that the opposing block only needs to stand still, the opponent does not need complex tactics — they just need to be in position. That is why Indonesia, a team not stronger than China, beat us twice: they did not need to be stronger, they only needed to understand us better.

Why was the set to the wing so slow?

This is the key question, and the answer has many layers.

The first layer is reception. When the opponent's serve prevents Vietnam's first pass from being perfect, the time to organize the attack shrinks, the outside hitter no longer has the right approach rhythm, and the ball travels slower. Slower means the block has time to move. But if reception were truly broken, the middle could not score many points either — the middle set also needs a stable pass. Bich Thuy still scoring suggests reception was not entirely collapsed; rather, the attack tempo broke down at the distribution stage.

The second layer lies with the setter. Kim Thoa is an experienced setter, but her form has been inconsistent match by match this year. In modern volleyball, the setter dictates tempo — if she cannot speed up the set when reception is good enough, the whole system falls into its familiar slow rhythm, and opponents will read it. I do not have her perfect-set percentages per match to confirm this, but what the eyes see on court — slow sets to the wings, hitters approaching at the wrong time — is consistent with that hypothesis.

The third layer, and the most painful one: there is no natural opposite left.

Hoang Thi Kieu Trinh, the team's natural opposite, suffered an injury. With her out, coach Nguyen Tuan Kiet had to pull Doan Thi Xuan, Thanh Thuy, and Nguyen Thi Uyen to the opposite position — essentially a "mirrored" role with different approach angles and different blocking demands. Moving a left-side outside hitter to the right is a common solution for teams short on players, but it always comes at a cost: attack efficiency drops, and blocking on the right side weakens. Vietnam paid both prices in the same year.

Thirty-six points and the shadow of a one-player carry

Thanh Thuy is the team's remaining bright spot, and also its easiest target for criticism. 36 points at Asiad, efficiency not high — but look at her schedule: Japanese club Gunma Green Wings, returning to VTV Binh Dien Long An for the domestic league, then four national-team tournaments starting in January. This is the schedule of an athlete who plays all year without a break.

People still like to say "she carries the team" as a compliment, but in this case it is a structural warning.

A team where every important set must find the same name is not a strong team — it is a team counting down to the day that person burns out. Thanh Thuy's efficiency drop at Asiad is not a loss of ability; it is the sign of a body that has competed continuously for 12 months. I sat and watched her collapse onto the court after the match, and thought about how a few years ago, when Chinese or Japanese players rested mid-season due to burnout, we wondered why they were so "weak." Now we understand.

Beside Thanh Thuy, the veteran core — Kim Thoa, Bich Thuy, Khanh Dang — all have been with the team for many years. The problem is not that they are aging, but that their form never peaks at the same time. This year there was almost no moment when all three were at their best. In a small-resource team, when the aging core is not simultaneously in form and the young generation is not yet ready to replace them, the result is a gap between two generations — called a "succession gap" sounds abstract, but it appears very concretely on court as an attack getting blocked at position 4.

Midnight phone calls and one thing nobody says out loud

Nguyen Thi Trinh was absent for family reasons. Vi Thi Nhu Quynh left for personal reasons. Nguyen Thi Uyen suffered a serious injury. Hoang Thi Kieu Trinh was injured. Four absences, four different reasons, but all fall into the same pattern: not poor form, but life outside the court.

I have written about football, about athletics, about the white nights of Moscow, and I have learned that when a national team starts having many players with "family reasons, personal reasons" at once, it is rarely just coincidence. It is usually a soft sign that a group of people is exhausted — physically and motivationally — after a high-intensity competition cycle. I have no data to confirm this, and no right to speak on behalf of the players. But I record it here, as a small noise the press rarely reports.

Coach Nguyen Tuan Kiet received the most criticism this year. Blaming him for poor adjustments at important moments is a grounded judgment, because the results — losing to weaker opponents — are evidence. But I want to reframe the question: what could the coach adjust when he no longer had a natural opposite, when the setter was having a bad day, when the sole carry had just played her 40th match of the year?

That is not an excuse; that is naming the problem correctly. Criticizing the coach is easy, and usually only partly right; building a workload-management system, a personnel-planning process, a young pipeline deep enough to absorb three or four absences at once — that is the hard work, and that is what needs to start now.

As Indonesia and the Philippines rise, where are we standing?

The Asian volleyball map is unchanged: China and Japan contest the top, South Korea and Thailand contest the medals, Kazakhstan waits for chances. Vietnam belongs to the second tier, and for many years we held the number-two spot in Southeast Asia behind Thailand. But this year, Indonesia and the Philippines have moved closer, while we have been sliding back.

This is the key point many analyses miss: Vietnam's decline is not entirely absolute; it is largely comparative — while we slide, the region is rising. That means to return, we cannot just "recover to the old level"; we must improve in absolute terms. This is bad news, but also good news: at least we know the destination, instead of only knowing we are being left behind.

VTV Binh Dien Long An and Gunma Green Wings are the only two hubs of the current development system — one star abroad, one domestic club holding the national-team core. Thanh Thuy's presence in Japan is a positive signal for individual development, but it is also where the international-domestic schedule conflict is born. Vietnamese volleyball needs more than two such names, but that is a long-term problem, unsolvable in one season.

The lights are still on

People still turn on stadium lights to watch the game; I turn them on to see the dark corners. In the dark corner of this season, I see an empty bench, a packed schedule, a captain collapsed after the match, and a coach criticized for lacking options more than lacking tactics.

The season has closed, and the team enters a review-and-rebuild phase. Before ending, I want to leave a question instead of a summary: next season, will we keep waiting for one name to score 36 points, or will we start building a team that does not need anyone to score 36 points?

The match ends, but the question still echoes on the empty stands, like a private space only those who stay behind can hear.