V-League On-Field Violence: The Missed Red Card and the Limits of "Doing It by the Book"

It was 2 a.m. in Incheon on 20 September, and I was rewinding the same ten seconds for the eleventh time. The match was Dong Nai against Cong An Ha Noi. I was not rewinding for a goal. I was rewinding for the two kicks Huynh Tan Sinh aimed at Nguyen Dinh Bac's legs, and for the moment referee Le Vu Linh reached for a yellow card. One yellow card for two kicks in a single passage of play. In the same match, Le Van Son threw an elbow at Dinh Bac. Two acts, one target, one game. Nobody was sent off.

That footage is why the meeting between the V-League organising committee, VPF and the VFF Referees Committee matters more than it looks. Officials demanded that referees "do it by the book", protect the league's discipline, and stop violent conduct on the pitch. Fine words. But what happened on 20 September suggests the problem is not the book. It is who checks whether anyone read it.

Context

Placed side by side, this season's incidents stop looking like isolated accidents.

Round 2 of the 2026-2027 V-League saw Doan Van Hau of CAHN break the leg of Doan Ngoc Tan of The Cong Viettel. In the same round, Nam Dinh's foreign signing Ezequiel Santos Da Silva stamped on the stomach of Vo Huu Viet Hoang of SHB Da Nang. Then came 20 September, and the list grew by two more entries.

The response was quick. Representatives of the V-League organising committee, VPF and VFF met the VFF Referees Committee directly. The message, as reported, was that referees must "do it by the book", keep discipline, and prevent violent behaviour on the pitch.

Four words sound very solid in a meeting room. But they describe a destination, not a route. In a conference room, "do it by the book" means no missed fouls and no missed cards. On the pitch, at the speed of ninety minutes, those same four words depend on one man standing seven metres from the incident and two men sitting in a video room.

I am writing this from Incheon, where I follow the V-League through screens and livestreams at awkward hours. I was not on the stand in Dong Nai. But years of watching Korean football and Vietnamese football side by side taught me one thing: the incidents that fans rewatch ten times are usually the incidents referees only get to see once. The gap between those two numbers is exactly why VAR exists.

The Core

Huynh Tan Sinh's case is not complicated in legal terms. The Laws of the Game define violent conduct as a player using excessive force or brutality against an opponent when not challenging for the ball. Tan Sinh ignored the ball, kicked Dinh Bac's leg, and according to former VFF head of referees Duong Vu Lam, he kicked twice in the same passage of play. The second kick is the decisive detail. One kick can be a reflex after losing balance. Two consecutive kicks at the same target is intent.

That is why Duong Vu Lam told Dan Tri reporters plainly: "Referee Le Vu Linh missed a card in that incident. Huynh Tan Sinh's kick off the ball was blatant, but he was not sent off."

But this is only the second layer of the problem, and I would argue it is the more important one.

The referee's error is settled. What remains unanswered is whether the VAR team said anything at all.

Under FIFA's VAR protocol, video officials may intervene in four reviewable categories, one of which is a direct red card for violent conduct. If the on-field referee has shown a yellow for an act that should be a red, the VAR team has both the right and the duty to recommend an on-field review. In other words, Le Vu Linh was not the only person who saw that passage of play. At least two more men in the video room, Vo Hoai Thuong and Nguyen Thanh Son, saw it from multiple camera angles, with slow motion and freeze frame available.

Duong Vu Lam framed the question precisely: "If Tan Sinh is punished retroactively and suspended for this, then referee Le Vu Linh must be suspended from officiating in the same way. Beyond that, the responsibility of the VAR team must be clarified. If the VAR team advised the referee and the referee overruled them, then the VAR team did its job. Conversely, if the VAR team did not advise referee Le Vu Linh that a red card was required, the VAR officials must also be disciplined."

This is where I think the organisers are not going far enough. By saying only that "referees must do it by the book", we quietly compress an entire system into a single block. But any league's refereeing system has three layers: the on-field referee, the VAR team, and the referees committee that assigns appointments. Each layer has its own control mechanism. Sanction one layer and the other two remain untouched. And while the other two remain untouched, the next elbow will still swing.

Data whispers while the whole stadium is screaming. I learned to listen. And what the data tells me here is not that referees are weak. It is that nobody is checking the referees.

I have a professional habit I cannot shake: after every controversial match, I log the incident, the foul category and the referee's decision. Three years of notes show an ugly pattern. In the V-League, missed red-card decisions cluster in the final twenty minutes of the second half, when players are tired and referees are tired. But in Tan Sinh's case, my own notes matter less than a simpler question: if the on-field referee misses it, does VAR cover for him? And if VAR does not cover for him, who checks VAR?

In 2026, when European stadiums reopened without crowds, I compiled 245 matches across the Bundesliga and the K League and found home advantage falling from roughly 55 per cent to 42 per cent. An empty stadium is the most honest mirror football has ever had, because it removes the noise and leaves the structure. A closed-door meeting works the same way, except it removes the audience instead of the noise. If a disciplinary decision is never seen, it deters nobody but the person punished.

In the K League, which I watch more often than the V-League, the list of appointed referees for each round is published in advance. Fans know who is officiating which match. When a referee disappears from the list for two consecutive rounds, that is a public signal, even if the sanction itself is never named. Duong Vu Lam hinted at exactly this mechanism: "Just watch the referee list for the following rounds and you will know whether the referees involved have been suspended. If they are not assigned in the rounds immediately after the one just played, chances are high that they are being disciplined."

The problem is that a hint and a public announcement are two different things. A punishment known only inside the industry deters only the industry.

In the J.League, the organisers publish the referee appointments and also the cases in which officials are removed from assignment, with a short summary of the reason. Not to name and shame, but so that supporters understand the system can correct itself. I bring Japan in here not because that league is better, but because when you set three football cultures side by side — Vietnam, Korea, Japan — one conclusion still holds: the issue is not whether sanctions are heavy or light. The issue is whether the system leaves a public trace.

The Contrarian Angle

The most comfortable reaction after a run of ugly tackles is to demand very heavy punishment. I understand that feeling. I have written those pieces too, calling for suspensions, fines and dismissals.

But try a different calculation. If the cost of a leg-breaking tackle and the cost of abusing a referee are roughly equal — a few matches suspended, a few tens of millions of dong — then players will simply choose whichever behaviour benefits their club more. Football does not run on morality. It runs on a cost-benefit equation, and that equation is solved in two seconds, on the pitch, in real time.

So the thing that stops the next kick is not a meeting. The thing that stops it is a red card at the exact minute it happens. The immediate feeling of being sent off is many times stronger than the feeling of a three-week suspension handed down after your club has already played two other matches.

Once, after an article of mine was taken down, I understood that the anger of the people who hate me is also a form of data. The anger of V-League supporters right now is saying something very specific: they are not angry about the yellow card. They are angry that nothing happened after the yellow card.

I could be wrong here, and I want to be clear about where. I watch footage with multiple camera angles, slow motion and the ability to rewind. Referee Le Vu Linh had one angle, one speed, and a fraction of a second. Many refereeing errors are errors of human limitation, not of character. Standing in his position, I am not sure I would have seen the second kick either.

But that is precisely why VAR exists. And that is precisely why the question about the VAR team matters more than the question about the on-field referee. One referee making a mistake is the story of one man. A silent VAR team is the story of an entire system.

The Takeaway

Next round, the job is simple. Open the list of appointed referees and look for the names that are missing.

That list will answer the question nobody has answered in public.

Then open the league's disciplinary bulletin, and check whether any player involved in the incidents of 20 September appears on it.

Those two lists, read together, will tell us whether this league chooses to govern by the rulebook or by the meeting room.