Storms and V.League: The Three-Phase Script Vietnamese Football Has Never Written

Late afternoon at a stadium on Vietnam's central coast, I stand in stand B, watching clouds coil into a thick grey mass above the roof of stand A. The referee lets the match continue. Rain whips across the pitch, the ball travels faster, the touchline blurs in the water. The loudspeaker reads out the starting line-ups in an even voice. Not a single sentence about the storm changing direction offshore. Eight thousand spectators sit under a darkening sky, and not one of them is given the information to decide whether to stay or leave before the final whistle. I keep a notebook, and it does not record goals. It records train times, flight times, the names of people who signed permits, and the gaps. That afternoon, my notebook held just one line: there is no script. Vietnamese football runs a season that runs parallel to the storm season. From June to November, the central coast takes consecutive landfalls, and the V.League still has to keep its rhythm. The fixture list is designed for television, for sponsors, for market demand, not for a tropical depression that changes course overnight. Nobody signs a contract with the weather. Some contracts are signed on the pitch, and some are signed in the dark. The disaster-response script for a Vietnamese match belongs to the second kind. It exists as a sub-clause, read aloud by no one, published by no one, pulled out only when everything is already too late. I am not writing this to retell a rainy afternoon. I am writing to place two things side by side: how a professional football industry prepares for danger, and how we are preparing. The distance between those two things, based on my experience watching matches over thirty years, is exactly where the truth still lies. In a deep-analysis document I hold, someone dissects a Category 3 storm-response plan using the exact framework of international risk governance. The document calls it by a technical name: the emergency-management lifecycle, in three phases before, during and after landfall. What is notable: that plan comes from Mexico, from Baja California Sur, where a Category 3 hurricane with sustained winds of 185 km/h, gusting to 220 km/h, is expected to make landfall between 16:00 and 18:00, through the Comondú area. Another state, Sonora, is placed on alert for a second landfall on Tuesday at lower intensity. I read that document and thought immediately of the V.League. The three-phase structure they built is not foreign to anyone who has ever organised a match in Vietnam. We also say before, during, after. We also have loudspeakers, security forces, an organising committee. But when the storm truly arrives, what we lack is not awareness. It is a document. Before landfall, their plan offers a list of actions so specific they feel mundane: identify shelters and travel routes, stock water and dry food, protect identity papers with plastic bags, secure doors and objects that could fly in the wind. They recommend battery lamps, avoid candles. They state clearly that if authorities issue an evacuation order, it must be followed immediately. They warn against leaving shelter when rain and wind ease for a few minutes, because that is the most dangerous moment, the eye of the storm or the lull between rainbands that makes people believe they are safe. Reading that, I stopped. I was once an athlete, once sat in a team medical room, once heard a doctor speak of abnormal red-blood-cell and haematocrit values as a signal that cannot be denied. I understand the feeling of a number that does not lie, when only people lie. And in that plan, the same logic emerges: the system always leaves a trace, people do not. In the pre-landfall phase, the quality of the Mexican plan lies in turning an invisible threat into a doable list. It does not shout. It does not offer grand phrases about solidarity against disaster. It gives concrete tasks that anyone can perform, rich or poor, coastal fisherman or farm worker. That simplicity is deliberate. In risk governance, when time is short, the simpler the script, the more lives it saves. Then the document says what any manager dreads: the forecast may change. It states plainly that the exact point and time of landfall may shift, and that intensity at landfall may be Category 2 or 3. That phrasing is a technique for managing expectations, not hesitation. You publish a forecast but mark clearly that it may be wrong, so that if the number later changes, public trust does not collapse. This reminds me of the transfer window. When a club issues a statement about a signing, it chooses the day, the hour, the wording. It knows that revealing too early inflates the player's price; revealing too late turns fans away. Vietnamese football learns very quickly how to sell information at the right moment. But it has barely learned how to sell a safety warning at the right moment. When the storm makes landfall, the plan moves to phase two: shelter in place, do not travel, await official authorisation. This is the shortest part in words but the hardest in behaviour, because it asks people to act against instinct. Human instinct in danger is to run. The plan makes them stand still. A fan's instinct during a match is to stay to the last minute. The safety plan makes them leave early. Between those two opposing commands, if no one stands up and says it loudly, spectators follow instinct, and they stay. In the Mexican plan, authorities tell residents to wait for official clearance before returning home. They understand that after the storm passes, the danger does not end. Flooded roads, fallen poles, severed cables, contaminated water, broken glass. Memory does not vanish like money, memory haunts, but danger has a concrete shape, and those shapes lie scattered on the way home. How do we handle this part? No document says clearly. No clause states that when a match is played in bad weather, spectators have the right to leave early with their ticket still valid. No rule obliges the organising committee to broadcast the storm situation, evacuation routes, and nearest shelter points over the loudspeaker. No rule obliges them to publish a postponement decision based on meteorological data rather than the feeling of whoever signs. This is the largest gap, and it does not lie in people. It lies in the system. The truth is that every match in Vietnam today is run by a chain of signatures, permits and coordination between the league organiser, the host club, local police, and the stadium operator. Some contracts are signed on the pitch, some are signed in the dark. The disaster-safety annex belongs to the second kind. It does not exist, or if it does, it is a form filled in for appearance, with no data, no dates, no final responsible name. Take an example from my own investigations. In 2026, I reconstructed a club's cash flow and found a 12.4 billion dong payment for coaching consultancy with no accompanying contract. The 12.4 billion never sleeps, but it can disappear. A figure recorded in a ledger without a supporting document exists on paper but vanishes in reality. Stadium safety is the same. A procedure mentioned in a meeting but never written into a signed document exists in people's heads, but vanishes when the storm comes. In the post-landfall phase, the Mexican plan turns to damage assessment, recovery, counting the missing, treating water, reopening transport. The document states clearly that relief begins only when authorities confirm safety. That is a hard principle: no confirming signature, no operation. In football, that principle translates to: no safety confirmation, no next match. But our fixture list is bound by television contracts, by competition progress, by line-up announcement dates, by tacit agreements no one dares break. During the transfer window, the noise of rumour drowns the signal. During the storm season, the noise of revenue drowns the safety signal. When an idol collapses, I no longer believe in victory. I believe in evidence. I believe in a document with a date, an hour, a signature, a protected group, a responsible person. When a sports idol tests positive, people want to believe it is a personal accident. But a second blood sample does not lie; only people do. The issue is not the individual but the medical staff, the coach's doping history, the silence of an entire system. For a match under a stormy sky, the story is also in the system. Not in one irresponsible referee, but in the fact that no one obliges him to be responsible. Looking at the three-phase structure, three points emerge. First is the rigour of the framework. The Mexican plan is not innovative, and that is correct. In emergency governance, people do not need innovation; they need a proven protocol. It follows international civil-protection standards closely, structured clearly along real time markers. Vietnamese football tends to go the other way: each incident is handled by phone, by a quick meeting, by verbal instruction, then forgotten. No process, only reaction. Second is dependence on individuals. In that plan, the focal point is named specifically, with a clear title, and every recommendation is established by an authority. In Vietnam, the focal point is usually the host club, and the host club usually has no meteorologist. That is not the fault of an individual chairman or director. It is the fault of designing a system that grants authority without granting capability. Third is the rapid change of the situation. That plan forecasts two landfall scenarios and warns the number may change. We forecast once, then freeze. No one updates at 14:00 when the storm track shifts. No one announces at 15:00 that the chance of postponement is rising. No one accepts that the plan may change while the match is being played. Reading the Mexican plan, I see one more layer, and that hidden layer is more memorable than the document itself. The list of documents to protect includes identity cards, social-security cards, and agricultural land papers. The mention of land papers shows the plan's audience is working people, including farmers and fishermen, who may struggle to access digital information. That is, the plan is written for the most vulnerable, not the most comfortable. That writing is completely different from how statements are aimed at Vietnamese football audiences, where information is published on digital platforms many fans genuinely have no chance to reach. One more detail is worth noting. That plan speaks only of three phases, not of economic damage. Not a line on infrastructure loss, not a line on fisheries damage, not a line on coastal tourism. That is a trace showing the document was drafted in the emergency phase, before any damage statistics existed. That is technically right, because in danger, lives come before anything. But in football, we have the opposite habit: talk about damage first, talk about safety later, or never talk about safety at all. The clearest gap in that document is also a lesson for us. It does not address storm surge, the sea-level rise caused by a storm, though this is a coastal landfall zone. A wall of water kills more people than wind in many hurricanes, and omitting it is a flaw. In Vietnam, storm surge is the main danger at stadiums near rivers and the sea. A hazard assessment for stadiums along the central strip should begin with water-level data, not with the feeling of someone standing in the stand. Standing on the opposite side gives the full picture. There is a reasonable argument for continuing a match in heavy rain. It is the argument about fan culture. In many places, fans buy tickets, travel long distances, book hotels. Cancelling abruptly at the last minute harms them more than playing on in rain that still ends safely. That argument is not absurd. Football is a priced consumer product, and respecting fans' money and time is worth doing. But that is precisely the tactical blind spot. People count the fan's loss from cancellation, but not the fan's loss from going home in a storm. People apologise to fans for a match ending in regret, but not for abandoning fans on the road home in gusts of 220 km/h. The damage balance sheet is drawn on one side only, and the forgotten side is the human one. A complete balance sheet would add three variables usually ignored in organising-committee meetings. The first is the share of coastal residents without independent transport, usually the elderly and the poor, the group for whom late evacuation is most dangerous. The second is the quality of local communication, including loudspeaker and community radio, not only digital platforms. The third is the time needed to reopen organised transport after the storm, because a match does not end at the final whistle, but when the road home is safe. There is one small detail in that plan I want to keep as a symbol. It is the recommendation to use a plastic bag to wrap documents. A plastic bag. That plan is not ashamed of cheap measures. It knows that in a Category 3 storm with 185 km/h winds and 220 km/h gusts, what saves a citizen's identity paper is a plastic bag. That humility is professionalism. Vietnamese football spends no small amount on display: stands, lights, screens, opening ceremonies. But it has not spent a single meaningful dong on writing a specific disaster-safety procedure for each stadium, each city, each time marker. If every stadium's organiser had a few-page document, with the meteorological centre's phone number, evacuation routes, assembly points, and a responsible signatory, then storm response would no longer be a matter of luck. I once stood in Moscow, where I received three pages of documents on abnormal red-blood-cell and haematocrit values of seven players. Only forty-eight hours later, I was followed at my hotel, and I had to seal the documents and send them to Vietnam through diplomatic channels. From then on, I learned one principle: every suspicion must have data, dates, specific names. When speaking of stadium safety, that principle still holds intact. Without data, without documents, every promise of safety is a myth. Moscow is never done being cold, but secrets are always warm. In Vietnam, the storm season is never over, but safety documents are always cold, frozen from one season to the next in the drawer of some department. We have solved harder problems: managing cross-border transfer contracts, tracing cash flows through tax havens, checking the medical history of an entire national team. So a storm-response script for fourteen stadiums is not an unsolvable problem. My conclusion is progressive, not a summary. If in the coming transfer window clubs could publish a safety annex attached to the match-organisation contract, stating clearly the before, during and after storm plan, that would be a quiet milestone worth more than any blockbuster signing. That is how a football industry proves it has grown. Not by transfer fees, but by knowing how to protect the people in the stands before the first whistle sounds. The question I leave for the league organisers, and for myself, is this: if the next storm makes landfall at exactly 16:00 to 18:00, and eight thousand people are in the stands watching a decisive match, who will hold the microphone and say one short sentence, enough for all of them to understand that today football must stop? That person's name is in no plan I have ever read. And that is the problem.