Osaka Nights, the V-League Rhythm, and Those Who Stay Awake

The wall clock in a small apartment in Nishinari ward reads two in the morning. Outside, Osaka fell asleep long ago; only the last train of the day still rolls away toward Osaka Bay. Inside, twelve Vietnamese people crowd around a laptop set on a low plastic table, eyes fixed on a replay of a V-League matchday. On the table sits a hot pot still steaming, a few emptied beer cans, and the small notebook I always carry when I go to watch football. I wrote one short line in it: Minute 71, they sang. A note that has nothing to do with any goal or any save, only a moment when the whole room broke into an old song, off-beat, and no one stopped. At my age, people do not count trophies; they count the nights a whole city stayed awake together.

The regular season of Vietnamese football has none of the breathless knock-out drama of an AFF Cup. It is a long, slow current, running through dozens of matchdays from the start of the year to the end, through the May heat at Hang Day or Thong Nhat stadiums, through matches played on late weekday afternoons when the stands are still thin. That very length is what turns the regular season into the place where you measure the true endurance of a football nation, not just the burst of a single moment.

Over years of watching, I have noticed something: Vietnamese fans tend to remember short tournaments better than they remember any single long matchday. But a team's rhythm does not live in the players' legs; it lives in the shared pulse of the whole city. And that pulse only shows itself clearly when the season stretches on, when a club must play three matches in ten days, when fitness begins to crack, when a referee's decision becomes dinner-table conversation. That is when I understand why the regular season is the backbone, and the big tournaments are only peaks rising above that sinew.

For Vietnamese people in Japan, the regular season takes on another shape. It does not happen in the stands but on a phone screen, in cramped apartments, in the break between shifts at a factory or behind the counter of a restaurant. I have sat through hundreds of nights like that. I keep the rhythm of the story, because I have seen it fall and rise many times. On some nights the team loses, the whole room goes so quiet you can hear the rain outside, then someone starts a song, and the atmosphere comes back to life.

Outsiders often say the V-League is a small playground, where clubs live on sponsorship and wait for the national team to call up their players. That view misses the most important thing. The regular season is where Vietnamese football tests itself every week, while the big tournaments are only the final exam. A young player only truly grows up when he plays the twentieth match of the season, away from home, under a harsh sun, against a defense that already knows him too well. Nguyen Quang Hai, Nguyen Tien Linh or Do Hung Dung all walked through those long matchdays before becoming familiar names in the stands. Without the long season, no one grows up.

In my notebook, each season is a different chapter. One season I followed the title race to the final matchday, when two clubs stayed within a point of each other and the whole city split into two shirt colors. Another season I stayed after the final whistle to hear a coach talk about relegation, his voice hoarse from shouting all match. Those stories never make the front page. But they are the submerged part of the iceberg, the thing that keeps the football nation from collapsing between short-lived fevers.

People do not remember the scoreline; they remember why they did not leave the bar. I have seen it repeat in Osaka, in a small bar near Tennoji station, on a night a few years ago. I sat with about fifty people, watching a national team match on a big screen. The result was not what we hoped. But instead of leaving, the whole bar stayed, singing an old song loudly until nearly three in the morning. I switched on my recorder and kept the choked voices, the curses, even the laughter breaking through tears. The next morning I wrote that the defeat was a shared pain, not the fault of one person. That piece was shared more than three times as much as the tactical analyses I wrote the same week.

Since then, I always carry a recorder when I watch football with fans. I believe the real story lies beyond the pitch. An empty stadium does not make a match smaller; it only makes the memory larger. A packed stand roaring can make people forget a missed chance, but a corner of empty seats with a plastic chair still warm from a body makes them remember a whole season forever.

What I want to say lies in how we measure Vietnamese football. If you look only at a few big matches, you see peaks and valleys, praise and criticism. If you look at the whole season, you see a different rhythm: the rhythm of workers finishing a shift at eleven at night, still managing to switch on their phones for the second half; the rhythm of the drinks seller outside the stadium gate, who knows every player's name though she has never watched them train; the rhythm of a child in the countryside watching football on an old television and dreaming of one day standing on the pitch.

I once thought I was a reporter. But the further I go, the more I see that I am a keeper of rhythm. I do not keep the score; the score lives on its own. I keep the sounds on the margins, the stories no one records, the nights when an entire overseas community stays awake to hear a whistle blow from halfway around the world.

One thing I have learned after many years: fans do not need us to paint things rosy. They need us to tell the truth, even when it is hard to hear. A sloppy defense needs to be pointed out. A wrong refereeing decision needs to be named. But after the criticism, there must still be room for belief. That is why I never leave the stand before the match ends, even when the home team is already three goals down.

This season is still flowing. There will be more matchdays, more arguments, more sleepless nights. In Osaka, my notebook and recorder are ready. I do not know which club will win the title, nor who will be relegated. But I know one thing for sure: there will come a night, in a small apartment, when a group of Vietnamese far from home sings an old song loudly, off-beat, and no one wants to go home. Homesickness is how a stadium tells its story when no one is left in the stands. And I, as every season, will stay until the final minute, to keep the rhythm of their story.