Vietnamese Football and the Pressing Illusion: The Lesson of the Final Twenty Minutes

In the 78th minute, Vietnam's winger collapses near the touchline, hands on hips, eyes toward the technical area. In the stands, the chant of "Vietnam" still rises in waves. But the legs on the pitch have already answered before the coach does. Three minutes later, the second goal arrives from a counterattack that the back line should have covered, if the two central midfielders still had enough battery for the final twenty metres.

I saw pressing before everyone else — then watched it die on the biggest stage of all.

In the summer of 2026, I was in Osaka, staying up all night to log every pressing run by the Japan national team against Colombia. I counted 37 successful presses across 90 minutes, filed the piece within six hours, and declared with total confidence that if they kept playing like this, Japan would reach the quarter-finals. They did reach it. Then they collapsed against Belgium, having led 2-0, losing 2-3 to a goal in the fourth minute of stoppage time. I had to sit with it for a long time, watching the tape again and again, and I noticed the one thing I had missed: from the 60th minute, the average distance covered by Japan's midfield dropped by nearly a fifth. The legs spoke before the mind. And I had ignored it.

The death of pressing does not begin with an idea. It begins with the legs.

Context: a beautiful promise and legs that know fatigue

For nearly a decade, Vietnamese football built its identity around one notion: run more, press earlier, never let the opponent play out comfortably. It is a reasonable choice in theory. When you cannot buy an expensive squad, the only thing you can forge is fitness and organisation. But the line between "running a lot to organise" and "running a lot to collapse" is thin enough that one heated match can tear it open.

The consensus is clear: to go far in continental competition, to reach a World Cup, Vietnam must press high. This story is repeated on forums, in commentary booths, in every debate about style of play. And it is not wrong. But it is only half the problem.

The other half lies in the calendar and the substitution rule.

From May 2026, world football allowed five substitutions per match as a temporary pandemic measure. In June 2026, the International Football Association Board (IFAB) made it a permanent law. This is the biggest rule change in decades, and its consequences have not been discussed nearly enough. A coach can now replace nearly half the outfield team. Which means: the side with the deeper squad turns the second half, and especially the final twenty minutes, into a war of attrition, where the fresh legs of a substitute overwhelm the tired legs of a starter.

If you doubt it, look at how major tournaments have shifted. Recent European Championships and World Cups have seen the share of goals from the 75th minute onward rise markedly. Big teams no longer try to kill games in the first half the old way. They stretch the match, let the opponent fall on their own, then send on fresh players exactly when the opponent's legs are heaviest.

World Cup 2026 sharpens the picture further. For the first time there are 48 teams, and the total number of matches rises to 104. A side that wants to reach the final will play significantly more games than before. In a tournament where the number of matches grows while rest days between games stay compressed, fitness stops being a secondary factor. It becomes the main currency.

Pressing is a loan, and the interest arrives at minute 70

I have a way of framing this that I use when teaching sports-science students: pressing is like a payday loan. You borrow fitness upfront in exchange for territory. There is nothing wrong with borrowing. But everyone has to pay interest, and the interest falls due in the final twenty minutes.

Let us split pressing into three layers of cost.

The first layer is the immediate muscular cost. Every high press run burns more energy than a run tracking back. Years of exercise-physiology research show that high-speed running and change-of-direction running are the two most expensive movement patterns, because they demand strong muscle contraction and the anaerobic metabolic system. A team that presses high for 90 minutes performs far more of these movements than a team that sits in a block.

The second layer is the decision cost. Every press is a gamble: cut the ball out and you have a chance to score at once; miss it and at least one of your players has left their position, opening space behind. When the legs are fresh, the decision to jump or stay is made quickly and accurately. When the legs are tired, that decision slows by a few hundredths of a second — enough to knock the whole defensive block out of sync.

The third layer, and the least noticed, is the organisational cost. Pressing is not eleven individuals running. It is a coordinate system in which each player must be at the right point, at the right moment, at the right distance from the man beside them. Once one knot in the net loosens, the whole net sags. And the net sags fastest when three or four players hit the red zone at once.

This is where Vietnamese football faces an awkward paradox. The Southeast Asian climate — hot and humid, temperatures regularly above 30 degrees, humidity over 80% at many times — makes every running action more expensive than in a European winter match. In other words, for the same press, a Vietnamese player pays more than a Norwegian or Swedish player. Yet we borrow the most precisely where the interest rate is highest.

I once believed pressing was unbeatable — right up to the moment the opponent read its weak point.

The weak point is this: a high press only works if it produces an early goal. Press without scoring in the first 30 minutes and you are trading fitness for nothing. The opponent only has to endure, hold the score, then send on two substitutes at minute 65. At that moment, the game flips entirely.

Look at an emblematic match: Japan against Belgium in the World Cup 2026 round of 16, on 2 July, at Rostov-on-Don. Japan led 2-0 until the 69th minute, pressing high in the first half, putting constant pressure on Belgium's back line. Then Belgium made changes. Marouane Fellaini and Nacer Chadli came on. Over the final twenty minutes the game reversed: Belgium scored three, the last coming from a counter in the fourth minute of stoppage time, after a Japan corner. This is not a story about talent. It is a story about the final twenty minutes, when Japanese legs ran out and Belgian legs had just been charged.

Four years later, at World Cup 2026, Japan again navigated the group stage in shocking fashion: beating Germany 2-1 and Spain 2-1, both through lightning counters after ceding territory. It was a notable tactical adjustment: the era of frantic pressing had been tempered into short, selective bursts. But against Croatia in the round of 16, a match that stretched into extra time and penalties, Japan once again showed their limit in the closing minutes. They lost on penalties.

At the Asian level, the fitness gap between Vietnam and Japan, South Korea or Iran is not a chasm. But the squad-depth gap is stark. When you have only fourteen or fifteen players good enough to compete at the highest level, five substitutions are not a weapon. They are a burden. Your opponent can bring on four players of equivalent quality; you can bring on two. The gap accumulates minute by minute, and by the 75th it becomes ten metres in every duel.

I remember a detail from my trip to Austria in 2026, when I flew over to watch Takumi Minamino play a Europa League match after he moved from Cerezo Osaka to RB Salzburg for just eight million euros. A veteran Nikkan Sports journalist had dismissed my analysis as lacking real-world experience. Stung, I flew over to see for myself, and in 63 minutes on the pitch Minamino scored one and assisted one. But the detail I remember more than those two moments is the 61st minute, when he left the pitch, face flushed red, and I understood that even a young, technical midfielder raised in elite football cannot sustain that pressing intensity beyond 70 minutes without support from the bench.

The bridge-burner taught me to read the transfer market — where a promise is cheaper than a single view.

And the promise "we will press for the whole match" is just as cheap. It sounds good on television, it sells tickets, it produces clips of applause. But on the pitch it has to be paid for with the legs of specific people, under specific conditions, with a specific calendar.

Five substitutions: weapon or burden

There is a paradox few discuss. The same rule, the same five substitutions, produces two opposite outcomes depending on a team's resources.

For a big club, five substitutions are a tool to sustain intensity throughout the match. They can rest three key players in the first half, send them on at minute 60, and turn the final twenty minutes into a storm. This is how Europe's top teams manage a congested calendar, when a season can run past 60 matches across all competitions.

For a team with limited depth, five substitutions are a hidden punishment. It forces you to have enough quality to use all the changes. If not, you let those substitutions pass unused while the opponent uses theirs, and the fitness gap in the final twenty minutes is only amplified.

In other words, the five-substitution rule has become a tool of stratification. It rewards teams that already have a depth advantage and punishes those that do not. In Southeast Asian football, where the financial gap between clubs and national teams is enormous, this means you have to rethink entirely how you build a squad.

The problem is not only about buying more players. It is about developing a bench of sufficient quality to enter without collapsing the system. That is a ten-year task, not a single transfer window. And that is why promises to press like a top Asian team, without the corresponding depth, are always easier to make than to keep.

I remember the season I followed the J-League closely, watching how Japanese clubs rotate. Teams like Kawasaki Frontale or Yokohama F. Marinos built a rotation mechanism in which the substitute is not a weaker player but a different option. That is the fruit of a patient youth system, not of blockbuster signings. Vietnamese football has similar seedlings, but the road from seedling to national-team-calibre substitute is far longer.

The AFF Cup and the truth about the calendar

In Southeast Asia, the fitness story is pushed even higher by the AFF Cup's schedule. The tournament is typically held in a centralised format late in the year, with matches only days apart, played in hot, humid conditions.

That density creates a double pressure. On one hand, a team must rotate to avoid injury and exhaustion. On the other, every match matters, with few games available for experimentation. The result is that many teams play a near-fixed XI throughout, and by the semi-finals and final the legs are ragged.

This is where tactics must serve fitness, not the reverse. A smart team will not press high in all seven matches. They will choose two or three to go all out, and in the others play a more restrained game, saving energy for the knockout rounds. This is tournament management, a skill Vietnamese football is gradually learning.

I have watched this across many tournaments, and I believe success in a centralised competition comes not from playing the prettiest football in one match but from playing well enough across seven. That is a different definition of excellence, less glamorous, but more realistic for Southeast Asia's specific resources.

The transfer market and the illusion of depth

There is a temptation that repeats every transfer window: buy a few flashy attackers, show off the beautiful touches on social media, then declare the squad depth upgraded. But real depth is not measured by quantity; it is measured by what a replacement can do when entrusted with a big match.

For a team that wants to press high, what is usually missing is not a striker. It is central midfielders who can come on at minute 60 and hold the same structure without the framework collapsing. A midfielder like Do Hung Dung at peak form can orchestrate the press of the whole block. But he is also human, with fitness limits, and cannot single-handedly hold the rhythm for the whole system across a long season.

This personnel problem reminds me of conversations with veteran fans in Osaka, when they talked about seasons their club won through depth rather than through a star. It is a lesson young football nations often overlook, because stars sell more tickets, and depth is not something anyone photographs.

But in the era of five substitutions, the ultimate winner is always the side with more options at minute 75. And that kind of advantage cannot be bought with a single deal in a single window.

What really decides the final twenty minutes

If pressing is a loan, then the way to repay it is rhythm management. Big teams do not press at the same intensity for 90 minutes. They choose the moment. They press in bursts, sometimes only ten minutes per half, but those ten minutes are fully charged and highly organised.

This demands three things that Vietnamese football lacks to varying degrees.

The first is the ability to switch states fluidly. A team must know when to press, when to drop into a block, and to move between those two without losing structure. This is a tactical skill, not only a physical one. Training it requires time and high-quality matches, which the domestic game does not yet supply in sufficient quantity.

The second is the quality of the midfield. Effective pressing begins with a central midfielder who can read situations, knowing when to jump and when to hold position. A good orchestrator can pull the whole block with him, and a tired one can drag the whole block down.

The third, and most important, is squad depth on the bench. Five substitutions turn the bench into part of the tactics. A team that wants to press at the highest level needs at least seven or eight substitutes who can enter without lowering quality. In Vietnam today, the gap between the starting XI and the bench remains a sore point.

This is why I believe the debate about Vietnamese pressing is misplaced. People argue about whether to press. The right question is for how long, where, and with whom. That is a resource-management question, not a philosophy question.

During the COVID-19 shutdown, when every league was suspended, I wrote a series about J-League stadiums and community moments. I remember the 2026 Osaka derby at Yanmar Nagai Stadium with exactly 42,000 fans, competing directly with five other sporting events on the same day. Unable to go out, I interviewed seven veteran fans by video call, and realised what they missed most was not tactics. It was the feeling of being together, shouting together, seeing a player get up in the 85th minute after going down in the 70th.

Football in 2026 did not lack matches — it lacked the smell of grass, the sound of shouting, the hunger made visible.

And that visible hunger is precisely what a correctly designed pressing system should protect. You press not to display courage. You press to pin the opponent back, to save energy for the second half, to still be standing at minute 80 while the opponent has collapsed. If your pressing does the opposite — makes you collapse before the opponent — then it is not pressing. It is organised collective suicide.

The counter-view: maybe I am wrong

I have to be honest. There is another version of this story, and I am not sure I am right.

That version says the problem with Vietnamese football is not pressing but technical quality under pressure. That when you cannot keep the ball, when you lose it too quickly in your own half, you are forced to press to win it back — not because you choose to, but because you have no other option. By this logic, pressing is not the cause of the collapse but the symptom of a deeper problem in ball control.

I think that version is partly right. In many matches, Vietnam had to press because they could not string together three passes. And when you press from a passive position, when the opponent only needs one long ball out for you to have to sprint back twenty metres, the fitness cost doubles. That is when pressing turns from a tactical choice into a punishment.

But even granting that, the conclusion does not change: you cannot fix a ball-control problem by pressing more. You are only advancing extra fitness to cover a technical hole. And that advance, like any payday loan, will come due.

In the moment I was left behind by colleagues, I learned to read people faster than to read tactics.

I also realised there is no formula that fits everyone. A team playing in Southeast Asia, with a hot, humid climate and limited squad depth, may have to choose a different path from a European side. Sometimes the right path is not a high press but a deep, tightly organised block, waiting for the opponent to err, then countering. That is a less glamorous route, harder to sell tickets on, but sometimes more effective with specific resources.

The truth lies somewhere between the two extremes. And that balance point shifts with each match, each opponent, each moment in the season.

What I am certain of is this: any tactical philosophy that ignores the human legs is a poor philosophy. And any promise that does not account for the calendar, the climate, and squad depth is an empty promise.

Takeaway: what I can verify

I am not writing this to dismiss a philosophy. I am writing to place a bet on a verifiable judgement.

My judgement is this: in any major tournament in the 2026 cycle, if Vietnam still holds absolute faith in pressing high for the full 90 minutes, they will lose or draw the matches where they do not score enough in the first 60. The signal to watch is very specific: look at the number of duels won in the opponent's half between minutes 60 and 75. If that number drops sharply compared with the first half, the midfield has run out of battery, and the game is about to turn.

The way to break the loop is not to abandon pressing. It is to turn pressing into a selective tool: choose the moment, choose the zone, choose the player. And above all, it lies in investing in squad depth, because in the era of five substitutions, the winner is not the one who runs most in the first half. The winner is the one still standing at minute 85.

Football is the easiest part to write. The legs are the hard part.