When the Chair Sits Empty: Leadership Lessons from a CEO Exit for Vietnamese Football

In 38 years of writing, I have learned that people remember the goal, but I remember the silence after the whistle. One Monday morning, a dry notice from the Pakistan Stock Exchange landed in my inbox: Kashan Hasan, Chief Executive Officer of FrieslandCampina Engro Pakistan Limited (FCEPL), a listed dairy company, had resigned. The notice said the casual vacancy on the board of directors would be dealt with according to applicable legal and regulatory requirements. No pitch, no goal, no volley – just an empty chair.

I am not a dairy expert. I am a sports journalist of Vietnamese origin covering tennis and football from Los Angeles for the U.S. market. But I read that notice three times. Because how an organization handles a leader's departure is like how a team handles stoppage time: it exposes the entire caliber, discipline, and culture of that organization. FCEPL operates more than 1,300 milk collection centers across Pakistan. Royal FrieslandCampina has invested $450 million in Pakistan's dairy sector, with plants in Sukkur and Sahiwal and the Nara farm. Yet the resignation notice was only a few lines long.

That contrast reminded me of Vietnamese football. Too many departures of executives, head coaches, and technical directors in the V-League end in media storms without clear explanations. The lessons I drew from FCEPL are simple. First, succession does not begin when the chair sits empty. A disciplined organization never leaves the leadership seat vacant for weeks. In Vietnamese football, many clubs rush into the transfer market only when the season is about to start, and many organizations appoint leaders at the last minute.

Second, contracts are the only shelter against media storms. A rumor about a young player like Nguyen Quang Hai or Nguyen Hoang Duc can travel at the speed of light before any signature is on paper. In Pakistan, Hasan's resignation went through the official stock exchange channel. In Vietnam, too much transfer information leaks from unverified sources, and players endure public pressure because of rumors. A contract has three layers: the announcement, the rumor, and the forgotten truth.

Third, silence is a leadership skill. I have seen a locker room fall into chaos because an official said too much in an interview. The best sports organizations understand that defense is the art of staying silent at the right moment. Clarity is not the enemy of emotion; it is the shield that protects those who remain.

I want to offer a contrarian angle. Many readers will wonder why a sports article opens with a dairy company. That is exactly the blind spot: we think sports governance is entirely different from corporate governance. In reality, every sports organization runs on contracts, personnel, budgets, and communication. When a sponsor withdraws, when a broadcaster breaks a deal, when an executive quits over strategy, the rules are the same.

In 2026, covering Croatia at the World Cup, I wrote about how Luka Modrić controlled the rhythm of a match with invisible hand gestures – something no statistic could measure. Expected goals or possession numbers cannot show who stood in the right place to defuse an attack before it formed. Similarly, no transfer ranking reflects the true cost of a bad personnel decision. In 2026, I sat at the StubHub Center watching how LA Galaxy protected young striker Gyasi Zardes from media pressure. That taught me that a strong sports organization is not one that avoids storms, but one that knows how to keep the rhythm for the people inside it. Vietnamese young talents such as Nguyen Quang Hai, Doan Van Hau, and Nguyen Hoang Duc deserve that kind of protection.

Looking at the summer transfer window, I see a persistent risk: small V-League clubs keep becoming finishing schools for bigger clubs through loan-with-obligation-to-buy deals. This mechanism silently breaks their financial plans. They invest in training, then bigger clubs harvest the players, and the cycle remains unsustainable. The rhythm of Vietnamese football, if not carefully guarded, could become a rhythm of brain drain.

When the pandemic left stadiums empty, football taught us to hear its breathing. Without cheering, you hear the breathing of those who run the game: executives counting budgets, young players worrying about the future, journalists searching for truth between rumors.

I don't know who will sit in FCEPL's empty chair. But the way the organization communicates – and the way it stays silent in the following days – will reveal its maturity. Vietnamese football is entering a transition cycle. The beat tells rhythm with the ball, but the heart keeps time with memory. When the rhythm of an organization begins to falter, look at what it stays silent about, not what it says. Who will keep the beat for Vietnamese football in the years ahead?